Early onset of deafening-induced song deterioration and differential requirements of the pallial-basal ganglia vocal pathway.
Abstract
Similar to humans, songbirds rely on auditory feedback to maintain the acoustic and
sequence structure of adult learned vocalizations. When songbirds are deafened, the
learned features of song, such as syllable structure and sequencing, eventually deteriorate.
However, the time-course and initial phases of song deterioration have not been well
studied, particularly in the most commonly studied songbird, the zebra finch. Here,
we observed previously uncharacterized subtle but significant changes to learned song
within a few days following deafening. Syllable structure became detectably noisier
and silent intervals between song motifs increased. Although song motif sequences
remained stable at 2 weeks, as previously reported, pronounced changes occurred in
longer stretches of song bout sequences. These included deletions of syllables between
song motifs, changes in the frequency at which specific chunks of song were produced
and stuttering for birds that had some repetitions of syllables before deafening.
Changes in syllable structure and song bout sequence occurred at different rates,
indicating different mechanisms for their deterioration. The changes in syllable structure
required an intact lateral part but not the medial part of the pallial-basal ganglia
vocal pathway, whereas changes in the song bout sequence did not require lateral or
medial portions of the pathway. These findings indicate that deafening-induced song
changes in zebra finches can be detected rapidly after deafening, that acoustic and
sequence changes can occur independently, and that, within this time period, the pallial-basal
ganglia vocal pathway controls the acoustic structure changes but not the song bout
sequence changes.
Type
Journal articleSubject
AnimalsAuditory Pathways
Auditory Perception
Basal Ganglia
Deafness
Finches
Humans
Learning
Male
Sound Spectrography
Vocalization, Animal
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11261Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06535.xPublication Info
Horita, Haruhito; Wada, Kazuhiro; & Jarvis, Erich D (2008). Early onset of deafening-induced song deterioration and differential requirements
of the pallial-basal ganglia vocal pathway. Eur J Neurosci, 28(12). pp. 2519-2532. 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2008.06535.x. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11261.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Erich David Jarvis
Adjunct Professor in the Dept. of Neurobiology
Dr. Jarvis' laboratory studies the neurobiology of vocal communication. Emphasis is
placed on the molecular pathways involved in the perception and production of learned
vocalizations. They use an integrative approach that combines behavioral, anatomical,
electrophysiological and molecular biological techniques. The main animal model used
is songbirds, one of the few vertebrate groups that evolved the ability to learn vocalizations.
The generality of the discoveries is tested in other vocal

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