Pre-Bout Neural Activity Changes in Premotor Nucleus HVC Correlate with Successful Initiation of Learned Song Sequence

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Raghav Rajan

Abstract

Preparatory activity, characterized by gradual, longer timescale changes in neural activity, is present in a number of different brain areas before the onset of simple movements and is believed to be important for movement initiation. However, relatively little is known about such activity before initiation of naturally learned movement sequences. The song of an adult male zebra finch is a well studied example of a naturally learned movement sequence and previous studies have shown robust premotor activity immediately before song. Here, I characterize longer timescale changes in neural activity in adult male zebra finch premotor nucleus HVC before onset of song bouts. I show that interneurons and a subset of basal-ganglia-projecting neurons change their activity several hundred milliseconds before song bout onset. Interneurons increased their activity, whereas basal-ganglia-projecting neurons either increased or decreased their activity. Such changes in neural activity were larger, started earlier, and were more common specifically before song bouts that began with the short, repetitive, introductory notes (INs) characteristic of zebra finch song bouts. Further, stronger and earlier changes were also correlated with successful ...Continue Reading

Citations

Mar 17, 2019·The Journal of Experimental Biology·Divya RaoRaghav Rajan
Oct 17, 2019·The Journal of Experimental Biology·Ari Berkowitz
Feb 26, 2021·Neurobiology of Learning and Memory·Arij Daou, Daniel Margoliash
Sep 24, 2021·PLoS Computational Biology·Daril E BrownVikash Gilja

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