Cooling telencephalic nuclei to test the interplay between timescales in a birdsong model

GOLDIN M; ALLIENDE J; MINDLIN GB

washington dc

Congreso; Society for neuroscience meeting; 2011

Society for Neuroscience

Telencephalic areas affect motor activities with mechanisms that are not fully comprehended. A possible mechanism is that they rule downstream motor circuits, taking control over motor behavior [Long and Fee 2008, Nature 456]. Another possiblity involves an interaction with the intrinsical dynamics of these circuits, which may have different timescales.This last hypothesis leads to experimental predictions regarding the deformation of motor gestures in birdsong. Intra air sac pressure patterns during singing in domestic canaries (Serinus canaria) were conjectured to be subharmonic responses of downstream circuits to the activity of the telencephalic nuclei HVC. [Trevisan et al. 2006, Phys. Rev. Letts. 96; Alonso et al. 2009, Phys. Rev. E 79 ; Alliende et al. 2010, Develop. Neurobiology 70]In this work we test this last hypothesis by experimentally manipulating the frequency output activity of HVC in canaries [Long and Fee 2008, Nature 456]. We constructed a cooling device that allows us to lower the temperature of these nuclei while measuring simultaneously the song and the intra air sac pressure patterns. Changes in pressure gestures are compared with the predictions of a dynamical model.