It is not possible to identify all pregnancies at risk of neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). Many women use some form of analgesia during childbirth and some anesthetic agents have been shown to be neuroprotective ...

Biological systems by default involve complex components with complex relationships. To decipher how biological systems work, we assume that one needs to integrate information over multiple levels of complexity. The songbird ...

A screw microdrive is described that attaches to the grid system used for recording single neurons from brains of awake behaving monkeys. Multiple screwdrives can be mounted on a grid over a single cranial opening. This ...

Male zebra finches display two song behaviors: directed and undirected singing. The two differ little in the vocalizations produced but greatly in how song is delivered. "Directed" song is usually accompanied by a courtship ...

Social context has been shown to have a profound influence on brain activation in a wide range of vertebrate species. Best studied in songbirds, when males sing undirected song, the level of neural activity and expression ...

Movements are necessary to engage the world, but every movement results in sensorimotor ambiguity. Self-movements cause changes to sensory inflow as well as changes in the positions of objects relative to motor effectors ...

It has become increasingly clear that the standard nomenclature for many telencephalic and related brainstem structures of the avian brain is based on flawed once-held assumptions of homology to mammalian brain structures, ...

Understanding the mechanisms of evolution of brain pathways for complex behaviours is still in its infancy. Making further advances requires a deeper understanding of brain homologies, novelties and analogies. It also requires ...

Researchers who study the neuronal basis of cognition face a paradox. If they extract the brain, its cognitive functions cannot be assessed. On the other hand, the brain's microcircuits are difficult to study in the intact ...

Only a few distantly related mammals and birds have the trait of complex vocal learning, which is the ability to imitate novel sounds. This ability is critical for speech acquisition and production in humans, and is attributed ...