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Behavioral sequences of animals are often structured and can be described byprobabilistic rules (or "action syntax"). The patterns of vocal elements inbirdsong are a prime example. The encoding of such rules in neural circuits ispoorly understood. Here we locate the site of song syntax in the Bengalesefinch by rapidly and reversibly manipulating the temperature in the songproduction pathway. Changing the temperature in the premotor nucleus HVC(proper name) alters the transition probabilities between syllables. Mostprominently, cooling reduces the number of repetitions of long repeatedsyllables, while heating increases repetition. In contrast, changing thetemperature of the downstream motor area RA (robust nucleus of theacropallium), which is critical for singing, does not affect the song syntax.Computational modeling suggests that temperature can alter the transitionprobabilities by affecting the efficacy of the synapses in HVC that carryauditory feedback to the motor circuits. The model is supported by a real-timedistorted auditory feedback experiment, which shows that perturbing auditoryfeedback shortens syllable repeats similar to cooling HVC. Taken together,these findings implicate HVC as a key player in determining birdsong syntax.

Temperature manipulation in songbird brain implicates the premotor nucleus HVC in birdsong syntax