MIT neuroscientists identify chain reactions within the brain.
As anyone who as ever picked up a guitar or a tennis racket knows, precise timing is often an essential part of performing complex tasks. Now, by studying the brain circuits that control bird song, MIT researchers have identified a "chain reaction" of brain activity that appears to control the timing of song.
The song of the zebra finch is very stereotypic; each song lasts about 1 second, and consists of multiple syllables whose timing is almost precisely the same from one performance to the next. "It's a great model system for studying how the brain controls actions", says Michale Fee, senior author of the study and a member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
The brain structures involved in bird song production have been identified, and Fee and colleagues had previously shown that the tempo of the song is controlled by a brain area known as HVC. During the 1-second song, individual neurons in HVC fire just one short burst of activity at a precise time point within the song. Different neurons fire at different times, so the activity of these neurons represents a 'time stamp' that causes the correct instructions to be sent to the vocal organs at each instant within the song.
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