title: How sleep affects the developmental learning of bird song.
abstract: Sleep affects learning and development in humans and other animals, but the role of sleep in developmental learning has never been examined. Here we show the effects of night-sleep on song development in the zebra finch by recording and analysing the entire song ontogeny. During periods of rapid learning we observed a pronounced deterioration in song structure after night-sleep. The song regained structure after intense morning singing. Daily improvement in similarity to the tutored song occurred during the late phase of this morning recovery; little further improvement occurred thereafter. Furthermore, birds that showed stronger post-sleep deterioration during development achieved a better final imitation. The effect diminished with age. Our experiments showed that these oscillations were not a result of sleep inertia or lack of practice, indicating the possible involvement of an active process, perhaps neural song-replay during sleep. We suggest that these oscillations correspond to competing demands of plasticity and consolidation during learning, creating repeated opportunities to reshape previously learned motor skills.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, City College, City University of New York, New York 10031, USA. sderegna@sci.ccny.cuny.edu
authors.forename: Sébastien
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Derégnaucourt
authors.forename: Partha P
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Mitra
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Fehér
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pytte
authors.forename: Ofer
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Tchernichovski
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D003624:Darkness; D003638:Deafness / Q000503:physiopathology; D046369:Finches / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects; D008297:Male; D012890:Sleep / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects; D013016:Sound; D013472:Sunlight; D013997:Time Factors; D014828:Vocalization, Animal / Q000502:physiology*