The search for a neural basis of communication: Learning, memory, perception and performance of vocal signals

Brain mechanisms for communication must establish a correspondence between sensory perception and motor performance of individual signals. A class of neurons in the swamp sparrow forebrain is well suited for that task. Recordings from awake and freely behaving birds reveal that those cells express categorical auditory responses to changes in note duration, a learned feature of their songs, and the neural response boundary accurately predicts the perceptual boundary measured in field studies. Extremely precise auditory activity of those cells represents not only songs in the adult repertoire but also songs of others and tutor songs, including those imitated only very few times or perhaps not at all during development. Furthermore, recordings during singing reveal that these cells also express a temporally precise auditory-vocal correspondence, and limits on auditory responses to extremely challenging tutor songs may contribute to the emergence of a novel form of song syntax. Therefore, these forebrain neurons provide a mechanism through which sensory perception may influence motor performance to enable imitation. These cells constitute the projection from a premotor cortical-like area into the avian striatum (HVCX neurons), and data from humans implicate analogous or homologous areas in perception and performance of the sounds used in speech.