This volume provides comprehensive, integrative, and comparative perspectives on birdsong and underscores the importance of birdsong research to behavioral and systems neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and biomedical research.

Scaling the Levels of Birdsong Analysis

Jon T. Sakata and Sarah C. Woolley

Neural Circuits Underlying Vocal Learning in Songbirds

Jon T. Sakata and Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama

New Insights into the Avian Song System and Neuronal Control of Learned Vocalizations

Karagh Murphy, Koedi S. Lawley, Perry Smith, and Jonathan F. Prather

The Song Circuit as a Model of Basal Ganglia Function

Arthur Leblois and David J. Perkel

Integrating Form and Function in the Songbird Auditory Forebrain

Sarah C. Woolley and Sarah M. N. Woolley Hormonal Regulation of Avian Auditory Processing Luke Remage-Healey

The Neuroethology of Vocal Communication in Songbirds: Production and Perception of a Call Repertoire

Julie E. Elie and Frédéric E. Theunissen

Linking Features of Genomic Function to Fundamental Features of Learned Vocal Communication

Sarah E. London

Vocal Performance in Songbirds: From Mechanisms to Evolution

Jeffrey Podos and HaCheol Sung

Autorentext
Dr. Jon T. Sakata is an Associate Professor at McGill University in Montreal, CanadaDr. Sarah C. Woolley is an Associate Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada Dr. Richard R. Fay is Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at Loyola, Chicago
Dr. Arthur N. Popper is Professor Emeritus and research professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park

Zusammenfassung
Vocal signals are central for social communication across a wide range of vertebrate species; consequently, it is critical to understand the mechanisms underlying the learning, control, and evolution of vocal communication. Songbirds are at the forefront of research into such neural mechanisms. Indeed, songbirds provide a particularly important model system for this endeavor because of the many parallels between birdsong and human speech. Specifically, (1) songbirds are one of the few vertebrate species that, like humans, learn their vocal signals during development, (2) the processes of song learning and control in songbirds shares many parallels with the process of speech acquisition in humans, and (3) there exist deep homologies between the circuits for the learning, control, and processing of vocal signals across songbirds and humans. In addition, because of the diversity of songbirds and song learning strategies, songbirds offer a powerful model system to use the comparative method to reveal mechanisms underlying the evolution of song learning and production. Taken together, research on songbirds can not only reveal general principles underlying vertebrate vocal communication but can also provide insight into potential mechanisms underlying the learning, control, and processing of speech. 

This volume will cover a range of topics in birdsong spanning multiple level of analysis.  Chapters will be authored by the world's leading experts on birdsong and will provide comprehensive reviews of the processes underlying song learning, of the neural circuits for song learning and control as well as for the extraction and processing of song information, of the selection pressures underlying song evolution, and of genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the learning and evolution of song. The primary goals of this volume are to provide comprehensive, integrative, and comparative perspectives on birdsong and to underscore the importance of birdsong to biomedical research, evolutionary biology, and behavioral, systems, and computational neuroscience.The target audience of this volume will be graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and established academics and neuroscientists who are interested in mechanisms of communication from an integrative and comparative perspective. The volume is intended to function as a high-profile and contemporary reference on current work related to the learning, control, processing, and evolution of birdsong. This volume will have broad appeal to comparative and sensory biologists, neurophysiologists, and behavioral, systems, and cognitive neuroscientists who attend meetings such as the Society for Neuroscience, the International Society for Neuroethology, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Because of the relevance of birdsong research to understanding human speech, it is likely that the volume will also be of interest to speech researchers and clinicians researching communication, motor, and sensory processing disorders.

Inhalt
PROPOSED CHAPTERS (with proposed senior authors)  

1.  Approaching birdsong from multiple levels of analysis - Jon T. Sakata and Sarah C. Woolley

This chapter will provide a broad overview of birdsong research from multiple levels of analysis. We will adopt Tinbergen's landmark framework to provide summaries of research into the mechanisms, development, evolutionary history, and adaptive significance of birdsong (e.g., the importance of song performance to reproductive success). This introductory chapter will highlight key concepts to be discussed in greater depth in subsequent chapters and will emphasize the complementarity of birdsong research to broader research on vocal communication in vertebrates.   

  2. History of birdsong research - Jonathan Prather and Donald Kroodsma

This chapter will present a historical overview of the field of birdsong. The authors will review the works of researchers who paved the way for the modern era of birdsong (e.g., Thorpe, Marler, Nottebohm, Konishi), highlight the importance of the comparative approach, outline central questions in birdsong, and discuss novel methodologies to answer classic questions. 

375

3. Bridging birdsong and speech - Jon T. Sakata and Patricia Kuhl

  Songbirds are one of the few vertebrate species that, like humans, are not born with their vocal communication signals but must learn the structure of their species-typical vocalizations during development. Further, the process of song learning in songbird^1200 times). The chapter will discuss such diverse topics such as critical periods, sensory refinement across development, social reinforcement and contingency, learning in a social context, sensorimotor learning, reinforcement models for sensory and sensorimotor learning, species constraints on song learning, and entrainment. 

4. Neural mechanisms of vocal learning - Mimi Kao and Michael S. Brainard

  This chapter will provide a comprehensive review of the neural mechanisms underlying vocal learning, theoretical models of vocal learning, and empirical tests of these models. The authors will provide detailed descriptions of the contributions of neurons in the canonical 'song system' and auditory processing circuits to vocal learning and plasticity. In addition, this chapter will review recent advances into our understanding of how neuromodulatory inputs into song and auditory circuits (e.g., from the ventral tegmental area, locus coeruleus, and nucleus basalis) shape the process of vocal learning. This chapter will also review shared and distinct mechanisms underlying sensory vs. sensorimotor learning as well as recent advances into the contribution of brain areas outside the canonical song system to song learning.

5. Neural mechanisms of song control - Michael Long and Tim Gardner

This chapter will review the exciting new advances in our understanding of how neurons in the song system control song production. The chapter will provide an overview of theoretical models of song control and empirical support for such models and will discuss sensorimotor integration, efference copy, and feedback signals. The authors will also summarize recent te…