Millisecond-scale motor coding precedes sensorimotor learning in songbirds.

Leila May M Pascual, Aanya Vusirikala, Ilya M Nemenman, Samuel J Sober, Michael Pasek
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Abstract

A key goal of the nervous system in young animals is to learn motor skills. Songbirds learn to sing as juveniles, providing a unique opportunity to identify the neural correlates of skill acquisition. Prior studies have shown that spike rate variability in vocal motor cortex decreases substantially during song acquisition, suggesting a transition from rate-based neural control to the millisecond-precise motor codes known to underlie adult vocal performance. By distinguishing how the ensemble of spike patterns fired by cortical neurons (the "neural vocabulary") and the relationship between spike patterns and song acoustics (the "neural code") change during song acquisition, we quantified how vocal control changes across learning in juvenile Bengalese finches. We found that despite the expected drop in rate variability (a learning-related change in spike vocabulary), the precision of the neural code in the youngest singers is the same as in adults, with 1-2 ms variations in spike timing transduced into quantifiably different behaviors. In contrast, fluctuations in firing rates on longer timescales fail to affect the motor output in both juvenile and adult animals. The consistent presence of millisecond-scale motor coding during changing levels of spike rate and behavioral variability suggests that learning-related changes in cortical activity reflect the brain's changing its spiking vocabulary to better match the underlying motor code, rather than a change in the precision of the code itself.

孟加拉雀的毫秒级运动控制先于感觉运动学习。
幼年动物神经系统的一个关键目标是学习运动技能。鸣禽在幼年时期学习唱歌,这为确定技能学习的神经相关性提供了一个独特的机会。之前的研究表明,尖峰率变异性在鸣唱学习过程中会降低,这表明基于速率的神经控制已经过渡到了已知的成年鸣唱表现所依赖的毫秒级精确运动代码。通过量化大脑皮层神经元发射的尖峰模式集合("神经词汇")以及尖峰模式与鸣声之间的关系("神经代码")在鸣声习得过程中的变化,我们量化了幼年班加罗尔雀的发声控制在学习过程中的变化。我们发现,尽管率变异性出现了预期的下降(与学习有关的尖峰词汇变化),但最年轻歌手的神经代码的精确度与成年歌手相同,尖峰计时的 1-2 毫秒变化会转化为可量化的不同行为。与此相反,更长时间尺度的发射率波动不会影响运动输出。在尖峰率和行为变异水平不断变化的过程中,始终存在毫秒级的运动编码,这支持了一种观点,即学习早期的变异源于有意的运动探索,而不是不精确的运动控制。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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