A circular model for song motor control in Serinus canaria

Song production in songbirds is controlled by a network of nuclei distributed across several brain regions, which drives respiratory and vocal motor systems to generate sound. We built a model for birdsong production, whose variables are the average activities of different neural populations within these nuclei of the song system. We focus on the predictions of respiratory patterns of song, because these can be easily measured and therefore provide a validation for the model. We test the hypothesis that it is possible to construct a model in which (1) the activity of an expiratory related (ER) neural population fits the observed pressure patterns used by canaries during singing, and (2) a higher forebrain neural population, HVC, is sparsely active, simultaneously with significant motor instances of the pressure patterns. We show that in order to achieve these two requirements, the ER neural population needs to receive two inputs: a direct one, and its copy after being processed by other areas of the song system. The model is capable of reproducing the measured respiratory patterns and makes specific predictions on the timing of HVC activity during their production. These results suggest that vocal production is controlled by a circular network rather than by a simple top-down architecture.Fil: Alonso, Rodrigo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Sistemas Dinámicos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Trevisan, Marcos Alberto. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Sistemas Dinámicos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Amador, Ana. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Sistemas Dinámicos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Goller, Franz. University Of Utah. Department Of Biology; Estados UnidosFil: Mindlin, Bernardo Gabriel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Sistemas Dinámicos; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Dynamical model for the neural activity of singing Serinus canaria

Vocal production in songbirds is a key topic regarding the motor control of a complex, learned behavior. Birdsong is the result of the interaction between the activity of an intricate set of neural nuclei specifically dedicated to song production and learning (known as the "song system"), the respiratory system and the vocal organ. These systems interact and give rise to precise biomechanical motor gestures which result in song production. Telencephalic neural nuclei play a key role in the production of motor commands that drive the periphery, and while several attempts have been made to understand their coding strategy, difficulties arise when trying to understand neural activity in the frame of the song system as a whole. In this work, we report neural additive models embedded in an architecture compatible with the song system to provide a tool to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by considering the global activity of the units in each neural nucleus. This model is capable of generating outputs compatible with measurements of air sac pressure during song production in canaries (Serinus canaria). In this work, we show that the activity in a telencephalic nucleus required by the model to reproduce the observed respiratory gestures is compatible with electrophysiological recordings of single neuron activity in freely behaving animals.Fil: Herbert, Cecilia Thomsett. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Boari, Santiago. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Mindlin, Bernardo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Amador, Ana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Significant instances in motor gestures of different songbird species

The nervous system representation of a motor program is an open problem for most behaviors. In birdsong production, it has been proposed that some special temporal instances, linked to significant aspects of the motor gestures used to generate the song, are preferentially represented in the cortex. In this work, we compute these temporal instances for two species, and report which of them is better suited to test the proposed coding (as well as alternative models) against data.Fil: Lassa Ortiz, Javier Nahuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Herbert, Cecilia Thomsett. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Mindlin, Bernardo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Amador, Ana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Of Mites and Brains: Ectoparasitism in Nestlings Alters the Development of Song Control Nuclei in European Starlings

The developmental stress hypothesis suggests that birdsong can reflect the current condition and developmental history of a songbird. Developmental stressors such as food restriction or ectoparasitism can hinder normal song development, leading to altered song quality in adulthood. Previous research has demonstrated that early food restriction results in reduced growth of song control nuclei, which may account for the effects of early food restriction on adult song quality. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of early ectoparasitism on birdsong have not been directly investigated. In this study, we examined the development of song control nuclei in European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) nestlings under varying levels of ectoparasitic infestation. We subjected nests to either the addition of Northern fowl mites (Ornithonyssus sylviarum) or the use of a miticide, Permethrin, to reduce ectoparasites. We followed nestlings throughout pre-fledging development and assessed physical growth and hematological titers on brood-days 10 and 20. On brood-day 20, we harvested nestling brains for later histological analysis. We found that nestlings from nests with added mites had significantly shorter wing chord and lower body mass on brood-day 10, but on brood-day 20, structural growth was similar to that of nestlings in miticide-treated nests. Our analyses revealed that, relative to miticide-treated nests, hematocrit, brain mass, and the volumes of two song control nuclei (HVC and the robust nucleus of the archipallium) were significantly reduced in nests with added ectoparasites on brood-day 20. These findings suggest that early ectoparasitism can affect the development of song control nuclei, potentially resulting in altered song quality in adulthood

Física y Biología: el complejo camino de la inter-disciplina

En este artículo se discuten algunos aspectos del trabajo científico en la frontera entre la física y labiología, detallando particularmente casos que emergen de las neurociencias. Se toma el canto de las aves como un ejemplo de interacción entre físicos y biólogos para avanzar en el conocimiento de la generación de un comportamiento complejo.This article discusses some aspects of scientifc work at the frontier between physics and biology, detailing particularly cases that emerge from neuroscience. Birdsong is taken as an example of interaction between physicists and biologists trying to under-stand how complex behavior can be generated.Fil: Amador, Ana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Mindlin, Bernardo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Average activity of excitatory and inhibitory neural populations

We develop an extension of the Ott-Antonsen method [E. Ott and T. M. Antonsen, Chaos 18(3), 037113 (2008)] that allows obtaining the mean activity (spiking rate) of a population of excitable units. By means of the Ott-Antonsen method, equations for the dynamics of the order parameters of coupled excitatory and inhibitory populations of excitable units are obtained, and their mean activities are computed. Two different excitable systems are studied: Adler units and theta neurons. The resulting bifurcation diagrams are compared with those obtained from studying the phenomenological Wilson-Cowan model in some regions of the parameter space. Compatible behaviors, as well as higher dimensional chaotic solutions, are observed. We study numerical simulations to further validate the equations.Fil: Roulet, Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Mindlin, Bernardo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentin

What can nest-building birds teach us?

We thank the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews for funding (AJB) and the BBSRC (LMG: BB/M013944/1 and SDH: BB/I019634/1).For many years nest building in birds has been considered a remarkable behaviour. Perhaps just as remarkable is the public and scholarly consensus that bird nests are achieved by instinct alone. Here we take the opportunity to review nearly 150 years of observational and experimental data on avian nest building. As a result we find that instinct-alone is insufficient to explain the data: birds use information they gather themselves and from other individuals to make nest-building decisions. Importantly, these data confirm that learning plays a significant role in a variety of nest-building decisions. We outline, then, the multiplicity of ways in which learning (e.g., imprinting, associative learning, social learning) might act to affect nest building and how these might help to explain the diversity both of nest-building behaviour and in the resulting structure. As a consequence, we contend that nest building is a much under-investigated behaviour that holds promise both for determining a variety of roles for learning in that behaviour as well as a new model system for examining brain-behaviour relationships.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

An in vitro analysis of neuronal survival in response to hormones and photoperiod in the HVc of the songbird Junco hyemalis

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2003The ability of songbirds to sing is essential for their survival, proper reproductive behavior, and territorial establishment. Male and female juvenile passerine songbirds learn their song through the formation of a song template in their earliest days of life, first by listening to their parents, and then followed by auditory feedback against their own templates to crystallize their individual songs. However, in most passerine species, only the adult males actually sing on a seasonal basis with little to no singing during winter, followed by a phase of song production in the spring in correlation with increased plasma testosterone concentration and extended photoperiods. While the production of new neurons in the song system of adult males is continuous throughout the year, a counterbalancing turnover of these neurons must exist until the spring, when a three- to four-fold decrease in dying HVc (hyperstriatum pars ventralis caudale or higher vocal center) neurons in males initiates song production. We hypothesized that testosterone, under the influence of increased photoperiod, attenuates the rate of programmed cell death (apoptosis) of newly generated neurons migrating into the HVc song nucleus in the wild arctic songbird Junco hyemalis. Using an organotypic culture system, we examined the effect of testosterone and [beta]-estradiol on the degree of apoptosis in the HVc obtained from photo stimulated and non-photo stimulated male and female juncos. We employed a TUNEL assay and BrdU-labeling to detect and quantify apoptosis. We found that hormonal treatment with testosterone, and [beta]-estradiol in photostimulated birds only, extends the lifespan of cells within the HVc compared to controls, as shown by BrdU labeling, and decreasing apoptosis, as shown by TUNEL assay

Animals and music: Between cultural definitions and sensory evidence

It was once thought that solely humans were capable of complex cognition but research has produced substantial evidence to the contrary. Art and music, however, are largely seen as unique to humans and the evidence seems to be overwhelming, or is it? Art indicates the creation of something novel, not naturally occurring in the environment. To prove its presence or absence in animals is difficult. Moreover, connections between music and language at a neuroscientific as well as a behavioural level are not fully explored to date. Even more problematic is the notion of an aesthetic sense. Music, so it is said, can be mimetic, whereas birdsong is not commonly thought of as being mimetic but as either imitation or mimicry and, in the latter case, as a ‘mindless’ act (parrots parroting). This paper will present a number of examples in which animals show signs of responsiveness to music and even engage in musical activity and this will be discussed from an ethological perspective. A growing body of research now reports that auditory memory and auditory mechanisms in animals are not as simplistic as once thought and evidence suggests, in some cases, the presence of musical abilities in animals

Rhythmic syllable-related activity in a songbird motor thalamic nucleus necessary for learned vocalizations

Birdsong is a complex behavior that exhibits hierarchical organization. While the representation of singing behavior and its hierarchical organization has been studied in some detail in avian cortical premotor circuits, our understanding of the role of the thalamus in adult birdsong is incomplete. Using a combination of behavioral and electrophysiological studies, we seek to expand on earlier work showing that the thalamic nucleus Uvaeformis (Uva) is necessary for the production of stereotyped, adult song in zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). We confirm that complete bilateral lesions of Uva abolish singing in the 'directed' social context, but find that in the 'undirected' social context, such lesions result in highly variable vocalizations similar to early babbling song in juvenile birds. Recordings of neural activity in Uva reveal strong syllable-related modulation, maximally active prior to syllable onsets and minimally active prior to syllable offsets. Furthermore, both song and Uva activity exhibit a pronounced coherent modulation at 10Hz-a pattern observed in downstream premotor areas in adult and, even more prominently, in juvenile birds. These findings are broadly consistent with the idea that Uva is critical in the sequential activation of behavioral modules in HVC.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01DC009183