Achieving perfection through variability: the basal ganglia helped me do it!
Motor variability can facilitate motor exploration necessary for learning. In this issue of Neuron, Woolley et al. (2014) record at different stages of the songbird basal ganglia and show that social-context modulation of motor variability first emerges in the pallidum.
Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Electronic address: marcschm@sas.upenn.edu.
Marc F
MF
Schmidt
Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Long
L
Ding
D000818:Animals; D001479:Basal Ganglia / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D014828:Vocalization, Animal / Q000502:physiology*