CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Birdsong is a learned motor behavior that emerges from the interaction between a nervous system with a peripheral vocal device.The neural substrate that controls song production is known as the song system and consists of an interconnected structure of neural nuclei that is bilaterally organized, with anatomically indistinguishable structures in each hemisphere. These nuclei ultimately project to the periphery, (i.e. expiratory and inspiratory muscles and syringeal muscles) and therefore oversee the generation of complex motor gestures necessary for phonation.The vocal organ, or syrinx, is a bipartite structure that contains two pairs of phonatory membranes (labia) that can be controlled independently to produce complex sounds. Then, to vocalize, a bird must coordinate these motor gestures that regulates the tension of the labia, the airflow, and the gating patterns. In this work, we present a computational model that puts together the neuronal substrate with the biomechanics into an integrated model for birdsong production: First, we propose a computational model whose variables are the average activities of different neural nuclei of the song system of oscine birds. As an output of this model, two variables represent the air sac pressure and the tension of the labia during canary song production. Then, we show that these time-dependent gestures can drive a biomechanical model of the vocal organ into synthesizing realistic canary-like songs.