Birdsong articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    In male zebra finches, song practice and courtship song performance are associated with distinct patterns of neural activity in the basal ganglia, resulting in reduced vocal variability during performance.

    • Jonnathan Singh Alvarado
    • , Jack Goffinet
    •  & Richard Mooney

  • Article |

    A new method for analysing change in high-dimensional data is based on nearest-neighbour statistics and is applied here to song dynamics during vocal learning in zebra finches, but could potentially be applied to other biological and artificial behaviours.

    • Sepp Kollmorgen
    • , Richard H. R. Hahnloser
    •  & Valerio Mante

  • Article |

    The auditory response of song premotor HVC neurons in sleeping birds, and HVC activity in singing birds, is synchronized with particular moments of vocal motor movements as defined by a dynamical systems model of song production; this HVC activity could be used as a ‘forward’ model to predict behaviour and evaluate feedback.

    • Ana Amador
    • , Yonatan Sanz Perl
    •  & Daniel Margoliash

  • Article |

    When songbirds sing, neurons in premotor areas fire coordinated bursts precisely timed to the dynamics of the song. The cellular mechanism for such sequence generation is unknown. These authors make the technical breakthrough of recording intracellularly in HVC neurons in singing birds, allowing them to test models of burst generation. They found that membrane potential rapidly depolarizes 5–10 ms before burst onset, consistent with models in which HVC neurons form synaptically connected chains.

    • Michael A. Long
    • , Dezhe Z. Jin
    •  & Michale S. Fee

Browse broader subjects

Browse Birdsong across other nature.com journals