The discrete neural network for songbird vocal communication provides an effective system to study neural mechanisms of learned motor behaviors in vertebrates. This system consists of two pathways--a vocal motor pathway ...

Birds are the most species-rich class of tetrapod vertebrates and have wide relevance across many research fields. We explored bird macroevolution using full genomes from 48 avian species representing all major extant clades. ...

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 ...

Most vertebrates communicate acoustically, but few, among them humans, dolphins and whales, bats, and three orders of birds, learn this trait. FOXP2 is the first gene linked to human speech and has been the target of positive ...

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 ...

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 ...

Auditory and vocal regulation of gene expression occurs in separate discrete regions of the songbird brain. Here we demonstrate that regulated gene expression also occurs during vocal communication in a parrot, belonging ...

Neuronal replacement occurs in the forebrain of juvenile and adult songbirds. To address the molecular processes that govern this replacement, we cloned the zebra finch insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II) cDNA, a factor ...

Hummingbirds have developed a wealth of intriguing features, such as backwards flight, ultraviolet vision, extremely high metabolic rates, nocturnal hibernation, high brain-to-body size ratio and a remarkable species-specific ...

MOTIVATION: Although many network inference algorithms have been presented in the bioinformatics literature, no suitable approach has been formulated for evaluating their effectiveness at recovering models of complex biological ...