ArticleeLife2014
A neural circuit mechanism for regulating vocal variability during song learning in zebra finches.
Article in eLife, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cholinergic signaling differentially regulates a vocal motor pallial nucleus to stabilize adult birdsong.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Complex Sound Discrimination in Zebrafish: Auditory Learning Within a Novel "Go/Go" Decision-Making Paradigm.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Control Principles of Neural Dynamics Revealed by the Neurobiology of Timing.Annual review of neuroscience · 2025Review
- Millisecond-scale motor coding precedes sensorimotor learning in songbirds.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The central role of the individual in the history of brains.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Unsupervised restoration of a complex learned behavior after large-scale neuronal perturbation.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Article
- Behavioral decomposition reveals rich encoding structure employed across neocortex in rats.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Motor cortex analogue neurons in songbirds utilize Kv3 channels to generate ultranarrow spikes.eLife · 2023Article
- Estradiol decreases the excitability of RA projection neurons in adult male zebra finches.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2023Article
- Vagus nerve stimulation drives selective circuit modulation through cholinergic reinforcement.Neuron · 2022Article
- Performance-Dependent Consolidation of Learned Vocal Changes in Adult Songbirds.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Modelling learning in Caenorhabditis elegans chemosensory and locomotive circuitry for T-maze navigation.The European journal of neuroscience · 2022Article
- Resurgent NaNature communications · 2021Article
- Disengagement of Motor Cortex during Long-Term Learning Tracks the Performance Level of Learned Movements.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Article
- Actor-critic reinforcement learning in the songbird.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2020Review
- Synaptic mechanisms for motor variability in a feedforward network.Science advances · 2020Article
- Article
- Future Portrait of the Athletic Brain: Mechanistic Understanding of Human Sport PerformanceFrontiers in systems neuroscience · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Motor skill learning is characterized by improved performance and reduced motor variability. The neural mechanisms that couple skill level and variability, however, are not known. The zebra finch, a songbird, presents a unique opportunity to address this question because production of learned song and induction of vocal variability are instantiated in distinct circuits that converge on a motor cortex analogue controlling vocal output. To probe the interplay between learning and variability, we made intracellular recordings from neurons in this area, characterizing how their inputs from the functionally distinct pathways change throughout song development. We found that inputs that drive stereotyped song-patterns are strengthened and pruned, while inputs that induce variability remain unchanged. A simple network model showed that strengthening and pruning of action-specific connections reduces the sensitivity of motor control circuits to variable input and neural 'noise'. This identifies a simple and general mechanism for learning-related regulation of motor variability.
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Registered trials
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.