Sensory and Motor Systems
Author: Facundo Fainstein | email: facu.fainstein@gmail.com
Facundo Fainstein 1°, Ana Amador 1°, Gabriel B. Mindlin 1°
1° Departamento de Física, FCEN, UBA and IFIBA-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Birdsong is a complex behavior that emerges from the interaction of the nervous system, a biomechanical device and the environment. Motor instructions from the central nervous system drive the respiratory system and the syrinx, the avian vocal organ. How these neural instructions change the configuration of the syrinx and how that is related to sound frequency control has been recently studied [1]. However, the way in which pressure patterns necessary for sound production emerge from motor instructions remains unknown. Moreover, many species use air sac pressure for frequency modulation. Here, we perform experiments to measure expiratory muscles activity and air sac pressure in singing canaries (Serinus Canaria). We propose a simple biophysical model with the main dynamical elements found in an avian respiratory system and we show that it can reproduce the pressure patterns observed, using the electrical activity recorded in the muscle as input. This provides a framework to assess how biomechanics constraints singing timescales and provides robustness to perturbations. Altogether these works show the possibility to have a unified biomechanical model that synthesizes birdsong from motor instructions. References: [1] J. F. Döppler, A. Bush, F. Goller, and G. B. Mindlin, From electromyographic activity to frequency modulation in zebra finch song, J. Comp. Physiol. A, 204(2), 209-217 (2018).