Neural processing of auditory feedback during vocal practice in a songbird

Georg B. Keller and Richard H. R. Hahnloser ()
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Georg B. Keller: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich/ETH Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland
Richard H. R. Hahnloser: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich/ETH Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland

Nature, 2009, vol. 457, issue 7226, 187-190

Abstract: Striking the right note Songbirds are vocal learners, in that they learn to imitate the song of a tutor. In a noisy colony, this means that individual birds need to differentiate self-generated vocalizations from other sounds so that they can accurately match the learned song template. For this reason it has long been assumed that songbirds — like humans —possess a brain mechanism capable of detecting vocal errors. George Keller and Richard Hahnloser now report the identification of neurons in the auditory forebrain of zebrafinch that specifically respond to either song or playback perturbations, suggesting the existence of a computational error-checking function in the forebrain auditory areas. This confirms a long-established theoretical concept — the theory of internal models — as a basis of vocal imitation learning.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1038/nature07467

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