Meaning in the avian auditory cortex: neural representation of communication calls.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how the brain extracts the behavioral meaning carried by specific vocalization types that can be emitted by various vocalizers and in different conditions is a central question in auditory research. This semantic categorization is a fundamental process required for acoustic communication, and presupposes discriminative and invariance properties of the auditory system for conspecific vocalizations. Songbirds have been used extensively to study vocal learning, but the communicative function of all their vocalizations and their neural representation has yet to be examined. In this study, we first generated a library containing almost the entire zebra finch vocal repertoire, and organised communication calls along nine different categories according to their behavioral meaning. W

SUBMITTER: Elie JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4347984 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature