Parsing social context in auditory forebrain of male zebra finches.

To understand the influence of natural behavioral context on neural activity requires studying awake-behaving animals. Microdrive devices facilitate bridging behavior and physiology to examine neural dynamics across behavioral contexts. Impediments to long-term single unit recordings in awake-behaving animals include tradeoffs between weight, functional flexibility, expense, and fabrication difficulty in microdrive devices. We describe a straightforward and low-cost method to fabricate versatile and lightweight microdrives that remain functional for months in awake-behaving zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). The vocal and gregarious nature of zebra finches provide an opportunity to investigate neural representations of social and behavioral context. Using microdrives, we report how auditory responses in an auditory association region of the pallium are modulated by two naturalistic contexts: self- vs. externally-generated song (behavioral context), and solitary vs. social listening (social context). While auditory neurons exhibited invariance across behavioral contexts, in a social context, response strength and stimulus selectivity were greater in a social condition. We also report stimulus-specific correlates of audition in local field potentials. Using a versatile, lightweight, and accessible microdrive design for small animals, we find that the auditory forebrain represents social but not behavioral context in awake-behaving animals.