Abstract
Sequences of neural activity are thought to play an important role in motor control. The neural mechanisms that give rise to these sequences are not well understood, but an influential idea is that activity propagation in ensembles of neurons can generate sequential activity (i.e., a synfire chain). Birdsong is an elaborate and stereotyped vocal behavior controlled with millisecond precision, and various lines of evidence support the hypothesis that song premotor neurons located in a telencephalic nucleus HVC form a synaptic chain to generate song tempo. Here we combine brain temperature manipulation, synaptic activity recording, and computational methods to show that song tempo is not generated by a local mechanism of HVC but instead is the product of a distributed and recurrent synaptic network spanning the forebrain and brainstem. Using a miniature Peltier device, we found that focally manipulating the temperature of HVC exerted much greater effect on activity propagation locally within HVC than it did on song tempo, however, exerted identical effects on song tempo and activity propagation through a recurrent network that contains HVC as one of its elements. The potential models that can account for the statistical structure of synaptic timing distribution of HVC neurons will be discussed in the talk.
