Sensory and Motor Systems
Author: Javier Nahuel Lassa Ortiz | email: javi.lassa@gmail.com
Javier N. Lassa Ortiz 1°, Gabriel B. Mindlin 1°, Ana Amador 1°
1° Departamento de Física, FCEN, UBA and IFIBA-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Songbirds are established as a model for studying the neural mechanisms involved in vocal production. The sensory-motor neural nucleus HVC (proper name) is involved in song learning, production and maintenance. One major characteristic is its similar neural activity while the bird is singing or listening to a playback of the bird’s own song (BOS) while anesthetized or asleep. We used a multi-shank silicon probe (64 channels, NeuroNexus) to record neural activity in sleeping zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Extracellular recordings were obtained in HVC during the presentation of different auditory stimuli including the BOS and 2 controls: temporal reverted BOS and a conspecific song. Previous studies show high gamma and 30Hz local field potential bands increase its amplitudes while the bird is singing. In our work we found that the 30Hz band increases its amplitude while the bird listens to the BOS. We did not observe an increase in the high gamma band, being usually associated with motor activity. Moreover we found that the multiunit neural activity (MUA) is highly correlated along HVC during the presentation of the auditory stimulus BOS. Correlation values upon 0.5 were found in channels separated 600um. These results suggest that neural activity in this nucleus is more synchronized than previously known and requires further investigation.