Gesture dynamics are encoded by premotor cortical neurons in birdsong production

A. AMADOR; SANZ PERL Y; G B MINDLIN; MARGOLIASH DANIEL

Santiago

Conferencia; XVII Conference on Nonequilibrum Statistical Mechanics and Nonlinear Physics; 2012

Universidad de los Andes

Biomechanical models can help to identify control parameters used during movements, and movement parameters encoded by motor cortical neurons. We t a dynamical systems model including subsyringeal pressure, syringeal biomechanics, and upper respiratory tract ltering tothe songs of zebra nches. This reduced the dimensionality of singing dynamics, described as trajectories in pressure-tension space (motor gestures) near regions of bifurcation of the model. We tted model parameters by characterizing the auditory response "replay" of song premotor cortical HVC neurons to presentation of articial song model variants in sleeping birds, and also examined HVC activity in singing birds. We report that HVC encodes vocal motor output viathe timing of extreme points of movement trajectories