Neural mechanisms of early motor control in the vocal behavior of juvenile songbirds... This thesis is an investigation of the neural mechanisms that underlie the production and maturation of one exploratory behavior - the babbling, or subsong, of a juvenile zebra finch....
Regulation of learned vocal behavior by an auditory motor cortical nucleus in juvenile zebra finchesIn the process of song learning, songbirds such as the zebra finch shape their initial soft and poorly formed vocalizations (subsong) first into variable plastic songs with a discernable recurring motif and then into highly stereotyped adult songs....
Uva lesions abolish song stereotypy.... (F) Change in goodness of fit–a metric that quantifies how similar the syllable duration distribution is to that of subsong—in control lesion(black trace) and Uva lesioned birds (red trace)....
A sensorimotor area (nif) is required for the production of learned vocalizations... Vocalizations after NIf inactivation resembled subsong, highly variable utterances typical of the very early phases of song learning....
