Neuroscientist Michael Long PhD, learns how his precious zebra finches perfect their love song and, in the process, has made some surprising discoveries about how neurons hook up. A young male zebra finch spends several months learning the complex song from his father, and during this period will practice it several hundred thousand times. The resulting song varies widely from one bird to another but an individual reproduces it in an almost identical way each time. How the bird’s brain cells wire themselves to produce this song is still a mystery, but it could be the key to understanding the mechanics of learned behavior generally.

In the finch brain, song is controlled by the high vocal center (HVC). A microdrive that measures the activity of neurons in the birds revealed that each group of these neurons is active for about 10 milliseconds during the song. Each group is likely connected to the next, like links in a chain, for sequential intervals. Each link signals downstream motor neurons (rA, robust nucleus of the arcopallium) that ultimately drive the vocal and respiratory muscles to produce the song. Read the full article here: The Melody of Finches.

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