Project Overview
Unlike innate behaviors such as breathing and swallowing, which we can do from birth, our most characteristically human behaviors are heavily influenced by the experience of observing others. These experiences affect what language we speak, what tools we use, what art and music we create, how we practice science, how we prepare our food, and many other core aspects of our lives. Our brains must construct a new motor pattern (or ‘program’) for each new behavior we want to learn. Our lab works to figure out how this process happens in the brain, whether it starts from a `blank slate’, or whether it makes use of some pre-existing innate patterns.
We use advanced optical and electrophysiological techniques to record patterns of neural activity in the brains of juvenile songbirds as they learn to sing their songs. We record from large populations of neurons so that we can watch new motor programs emerge after the young bird hears the tutor song and begins the process of imitation.
