Most of our motor skills are not innately programmed, but are learned by a combination of
motor exploration and performance evaluation, suggesting that they proceed through a …

Learning by imitation is essential for transmitting many aspects of human culture, including
speech, language, art, and music. How the human brain enables imitation remains a …

INTRODUCTION The mammalian neocortex, with its distinctive six-layered structure, is
thought to enable advanced cognitive functions not seen in other animals. Yet birds, which …

Many complex behaviours, like speech or music, have a hierarchical organization with
structure on many timescales, but it is not known how the brain controls the timing of …

Little is known about the biophysical and neuronal circuit mechanisms underlying the
generation and learning of behavioral sequences. Songbirds provide a marvelous animal …

Zebra finch song is represented in the high-level motor control nucleus high vocal center
(HVC) as a sparse sequence of spike bursts. In contrast, the vocal organ is driven …

Songbirds learn and maintain their songs via auditory experience. Neurons in many
telencephalic nuclei important to song production and development are song selective, firing …

The acquisition of complex motor sequences often proceeds through trial-and-error learning,
requiring the deliberate exploration of motor actions and the concomitant evaluation of the …

Adult zebra finch songs consist of stereotyped sequences of syllables. Although some
behavioral and physiological data suggest that songs are structured hierarchically, there is …

Birdsong is a learned behavior remarkable for its high degree of stereotypy. Nevertheless,
adult birds display substantial rendition-by-rendition variation in the structure of individual …