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Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning

As in human infant speech development, vocal imitation in songbirds involves sensory acquisition and memorization of adult-produced vocal signals, followed by a protracted phase of vocal motor practice. The internal model of adult tutor song in the juvenile male brain, termed ‘the template’, is cent...

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Autores principales: Deshpande, Mugdha, Pirlepesov, Fakhriddin, Lints, Thierry
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3953831/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24598418
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2630
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author Deshpande, Mugdha
Pirlepesov, Fakhriddin
Lints, Thierry
author_facet Deshpande, Mugdha
Pirlepesov, Fakhriddin
Lints, Thierry
author_sort Deshpande, Mugdha
collection PubMed
description As in human infant speech development, vocal imitation in songbirds involves sensory acquisition and memorization of adult-produced vocal signals, followed by a protracted phase of vocal motor practice. The internal model of adult tutor song in the juvenile male brain, termed ‘the template’, is central to the vocal imitation process. However, even the most fundamental aspects of the template, such as when, where and how it is encoded in the brain, remain poorly understood. A major impediment to progress is that current studies of songbird vocal learning use protracted tutoring over days, weeks or months, complicating dissection of the template encoding process. Here, we take the key step of tightly constraining the timing of template acquisition. We show that, in the zebra finch, template encoding can be time locked to, on average, a 2 h period of juvenile life and based on just 75 s of cumulative tutor song exposure. Crucially, we find that vocal changes occurring on the day of training correlate with eventual imitative success. This paradigm will lead to insights on how the template is instantiated in the songbird brain, with general implications for deciphering how internal models are formed to guide learning of complex social behaviours.
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spelling pubmed-39538312014-04-22 Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning Deshpande, Mugdha Pirlepesov, Fakhriddin Lints, Thierry Proc Biol Sci Research Articles As in human infant speech development, vocal imitation in songbirds involves sensory acquisition and memorization of adult-produced vocal signals, followed by a protracted phase of vocal motor practice. The internal model of adult tutor song in the juvenile male brain, termed ‘the template’, is central to the vocal imitation process. However, even the most fundamental aspects of the template, such as when, where and how it is encoded in the brain, remain poorly understood. A major impediment to progress is that current studies of songbird vocal learning use protracted tutoring over days, weeks or months, complicating dissection of the template encoding process. Here, we take the key step of tightly constraining the timing of template acquisition. We show that, in the zebra finch, template encoding can be time locked to, on average, a 2 h period of juvenile life and based on just 75 s of cumulative tutor song exposure. Crucially, we find that vocal changes occurring on the day of training correlate with eventual imitative success. This paradigm will lead to insights on how the template is instantiated in the songbird brain, with general implications for deciphering how internal models are formed to guide learning of complex social behaviours. The Royal Society 2014-04-22 /pmc/articles/PMC3953831/ /pubmed/24598418 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2630 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Deshpande, Mugdha
Pirlepesov, Fakhriddin
Lints, Thierry
Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
title Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
title_full Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
title_fullStr Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
title_full_unstemmed Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
title_short Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
title_sort rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3953831/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24598418
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2630
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