title: Rhythmic Continuous-Time Coding in the Songbird Analog of Vocal Motor Cortex.
abstract: Songbirds learn and produce complex sequences of vocal gestures. Adult birdsong requires premotor nucleus HVC, in which projection neurons (PNs) burst sparsely at stereotyped times in the song. It has been hypothesized that PN bursts, as a population, form a continuous sequence, while a different model of HVC function proposes that both HVC PN and interneuron activity is tightly organized around motor gestures. Using a large dataset of PNs and interneurons recorded in singing birds, we test several predictions of these models. We find that PN bursts in adult birds are continuously and nearly uniformly distributed throughout song. However, we also find that PN and interneuron firing rates exhibit significant 10-Hz rhythmicity locked to song syllables, peaking prior to syllable onsets and suppressed prior to offsets-a pattern that predominates PN and interneuron activity in HVC during early stages of vocal learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Galen F
authors.initials: GF
authors.lastname: Lynch
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Tatsuo S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Okubo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich 8057, Switzerland; Neuroscience Center Zurich (ZNZ), Zurich 8057, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hanuschkin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich 8057, Switzerland; Neuroscience Center Zurich (ZNZ), Zurich 8057, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Richard H R
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Hahnloser
authors.affiliation: Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Electronic address: fee@mit.edu.
authors.forename: Michale S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Fee
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004594:Electrophysiology / Q000379:methods; D046369:Finches / Q000502:physiology*; D007395:Interneurons / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology; D009044:Motor Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014828:Vocalization, Animal / Q000502:physiology*