Alex Kozhevnikov Group
Penn State
University
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RESEARCH |
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Neural Mechanisms of Sequence Generation
and Learning in Songbird The research in our
lab focuses on the neural mechanisms of singing and vocal learning in birds.
Birds, like humans, are vocal learners - the young bird first listens to its
tutor’s song, and then, by practicing and evaluating its vocal performance,
learns to imitate it. The song of an adult bird has a robust behavioral
pattern and the anatomy of the brain circuits involved is well-documented.
Such a unique combination of a learned stereotypical pattern of behavior and
tractable anatomy makes the song control system of the songbirds a model
system for studies of neural sequence generation and learning of
vocalizations. We are using
the technique which allows recording from identified neurons in singing birds,
yielding the most detailed information about neural activity in a functioning
neural circuit. This recording technique, in combination with manipulations
of sensory feedback and transient perturbation of neural activity, allows to
address fundamental questions about the neural mechanisms underlying singing
behavior in birds and, more generally, about the computational principles of
sequence generation and learning by neural circuits. |
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Alex Kozhevnikov |
Department of Physics |
phys.psu.edu