Subject-driven bioprosthetical avian vocal organ

EZEQUIEL M. ARNEODO; YONATAN SANZ PERL; MINDLIN, GABRIEL.

Huerta Grande

Congreso; SAN 2011 (Reunión anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias); 2011

Sociedad Argentina de Neurociencias

Songbirds are an ideal animal model to study general mechanisms underlying complex, learned motor behavior, as it is birdsong. While much effort focuses on neural control, we highlight the relevance of the interplay between the central mechanisms of motor control and the highly nonlinear peripheral biomechanical systems. In this work, we build an electronic syrinx with aims in the exploration mechanisms underlying birdsong production. The most widely studied songbird species is the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). Its vocal organ is capable of generating a large variety of acoustic signals, which range from simple whistles to highly complex sounds. We propose a mathematical model for the zebra finch syrinx, in which physiologically meaningful variablesdetermine the acoustic features of the solutions; and we implement this model in a digital signal processor. This device is capable of recording the pressure gesture of a muted bird and integrating the model on-lineto produce synthetic birdsong, which replaces the bird's own auditory feedback.This subject-controlled prosthetic device allows for a set of altered auditory feedback experiments,where feedback is altered consistently with modifications of the motor instructions intended to produce them.