NEURAL MECHANISMS OF INDIVIDUAL VOCAL RECOGNITION

在鸟鸣研究中，行为和神经生理学技术的整合使我们对复杂运动系统和声乐学习的神经基础的理解取得了重大进展。这个建议遵循类似的逻辑，通过整合欧洲椋鸟（Sturnus vulgaris）的歌唱感知的神经生理学和行为。 这项研究将拓宽我们对感知有生物意义的声音信号的神经机制的理解。鸟鸣就是这样一种具有生物学意义的信号，欧洲椋鸟和许多鸣禽一样，用歌声来识别个体。 椋鸟是研究鸣唱感知神经基础的理想动物模型，因为（1）该物种的识别能力可推广到熟悉鸟类的新歌声，（2）鸣唱的不同声学特征对个体声音识别的行为相关性已得到很好的理解。 这两个方面的个人的声音识别在椋鸟将使我们能够区分神经元的反应，是特定于单一的歌曲和那些是特定的个人，并进一步，这些反应的性质的生物相关性的具体信号属性，引起他们的特征。 这种综合的方法来研究听觉感知的椋鸟将提供洞察听觉前脑的区域，处理复杂的通信信号，并进入神经元机制，引起识别行为。 这样做，这些实验的结果将大大有助于我们理解复杂刺激的高阶处理。

The integration of behavioral and neurophysiological techniques in the study of birdsong has led to significant advances in our understanding of the neural bases for both complex motor systems and vocal learning. This proposal follows a similar logic by integrating the neurophysiology and behavior of song perception in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). This research will broaden our understanding of the neural mechanisms that underlie the perception of biologically meaningful acoustic signals. Birdsong is one such biologically meaningful signal, and European starlings, like many species of song birds, use song to recognize individual conspecifics. Starlings are an ideal animal model in which to study the neural basis of song perception because (1) recognition abilities in this species generalize to novel songs from familiar birds, and (2) the behavioral relevance that different acoustic features of song hold for individual vocal recognition is well understood. These two aspects of individual vocal recognition in starlings will allow us to differentiate between neuronal responses that are specific to single songs and those that are specific to individuals, and further, to characterize the nature of these responses with respect to the biological relevance of the specific signal properties that elicit them. This integrative approach to the study of auditory perception in starlings will provide insight into the regions of the auditory forebrain that process complex communication signals, and into the neuronal mechanisms that give rise to recognition behaviors. In so doing, the results of these experiments will contribute significantly to our understanding of the higher-order processing of complex stimuli.