ArticleJournal of neurophysiology2011
Changes in the neural control of a complex motor sequence during learning.
Article in Journal of neurophysiology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 79 papers.
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Who cites it
79 citing papers in PubMed, 148 citations in OpenAlex.
- Perineuronal nets in motor circuitry regulate the performance of learned vocalizations in songbirds.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Note similarities affect syntactic stability in zebra finches.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2025Article
- Fluctuations in Sequential Many-Alternative Decisions Reveal Strategies Beyond Immediate Reward Maximisation.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- Variable and slow-paced neural dynamics in HVC underlie plastic song production in juvenile zebra finches.BMC neuroscience · 2024Article
- Millisecond-scale motor coding precedes sensorimotor learning in songbirds.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Free will: An Example of the Dopaminergic System.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2024Review
- Expansion of learning capacity elicited by interspecific hybridization.Science advances · 2024Article
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- Cell type specializations of the vocal-motor cortex in songbirds.Cell reports · 2023Article
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- Cannabidiol inhibits neuroinflammatory responses and circuit-associated synaptic loss following damage to a songbird vocal pre-motor cortical-like region.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Motor cortex analogue neurons in songbirds utilize Kv3 channels to generate ultranarrow spikes.eLife · 2023Article
- Article
- Choice-selective sequences dominate in cortical relative to thalamic inputs to NAc to support reinforcement learning.Cell reports · 2022Article
- Resurgent NaNature communications · 2021Article
- The basal ganglia control the detailed kinematics of learned motor skills.Nature neuroscience · 2021Article
- Plasticity of stereotyped birdsong driven by chronic manipulation of cortical-basal ganglia activity.Current biology : CB · 2021Article
- Variable but not random: temporal pattern coding in a songbird brain area necessary for song modification.Journal of neurophysiology · 2021Article
- Maturation of Social-Vocal Communication in Prairie Vole (Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- TheFrontiers in neural circuits · 2021Review
19 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The acquisition of complex motor sequences often proceeds through trial-and-error learning, requiring the deliberate exploration of motor actions and the concomitant evaluation of the resulting performance. Songbirds learn their song in this manner, producing highly variable vocalizations as juveniles. As the song improves, vocal variability is gradually reduced until it is all but eliminated in adult birds. In the present study we examine how the motor program underlying such a complex motor behavior evolves during learning by recording from the robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA), a motor cortex analog brain region. In young birds, neurons in RA exhibited highly variable firing patterns that throughout development became more precise, sparse, and bursty. We further explored how the developing motor program in RA is shaped by its two main inputs: LMAN, the output nucleus of a basal ganglia-forebrain circuit, and HVC, a premotor nucleus. Pharmacological inactivation of LMAN during singing made the song-aligned firing patterns of RA neurons adultlike in their stereotypy without dramatically affecting the spike statistics or the overall firing patterns. Removing the input from HVC, on the other hand, resulted in a complete loss of stereotypy of both the song and the underlying motor program. Thus our results show that a basal ganglia-forebrain circuit drives motor exploration required for trial-and-error learning by adding variability to the developing motor program. As learning proceeds and the motor circuits mature, the relative contribution of LMAN is reduced, allowing the premotor input from HVC to drive an increasingly stereotyped song.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.