What we learn from singing birds

ARNEODO, EZEQUIEL M.

virtual

Otro; LTK Module 14 Standard Session; 2020

ETH Zurich/Universitat Zurich

Neural prostheses hold the promise of restoring lost function for individuals with motor,speech, and language deficits, as well as to advance our understanding of how the brainlearns, executes and upkeeps complex behavior. While limb-based motor prostheticsystems are actively studied and stand on years of development on non human primates(NHP) to yield increasingly high performance, speech and language prosthesesdevelopment has been much more limited. My goal is to accelerate the development ofspeech prostheses by developing an avian model that provides a much-neededcomplement to existing human subjects work.In an approach that parallels the development of the NHP model for upper-limb prostheses,my research will marry systems neuroscience, engineering, mathematical modelling andmachine learning to develop a brain-machine interface for songbirds, which are an idealanimal model for human speech by virtue of the many similarities at the neuronal,biomechanical and genetic level. The neural prosthesis uses a low dimensional model of thevocal organ to produce synthetic song when driven by motor commands predicted fromongoing neural activity, replacing a muted bird?s natural acoustic feedback. Apart from itsbiomedical potential, this work will unlock a wide range of novel studies addressingfundamental questions regarding central and peripheral mechanisms of vocal motorlearning, production, and upkeep.