Rapid interhemispheric switching during vocal production in a songbird

To generate complex bilateral motor patterns such as those underlying birdsong, neural activity must be highly coordinated across the two cerebral hemispheres. However, it remains largely elusive how this coordination is achieved given that interhemispheric communication between song-control areas i...

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Published inPLoS biology Vol. 6; no. 10; pp. e250 - 9
Main Authors Wang, Claude Z H, Herbst, Joshua A, Keller, Georg B, Hahnloser, Richard H R
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 01.10.2008
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Animals
Behavior
Birds
Brain
Brain - anatomy & histology
Brain - physiology
Electrodes
Finches - physiology
Functional Laterality - physiology
High Vocal Center - anatomy & histology
High Vocal Center - physiology
Male
Models, Anatomic
Sound Spectrography
Taeniopygia guttata
Vocalization, Animal - physiology
Brain
Animals
Finches
Sound Spectrography
High Vocal Center
Vocalization, Animal
Male
Functional Laterality
Models, Anatomic
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Summary:To generate complex bilateral motor patterns such as those underlying birdsong, neural activity must be highly coordinated across the two cerebral hemispheres. However, it remains largely elusive how this coordination is achieved given that interhemispheric communication between song-control areas in the avian cerebrum is restricted to projections received from bilaterally connecting areas in the mid- and hindbrain. By electrically stimulating cerebral premotor areas in zebra finches, we find that behavioral effectiveness of stimulation rapidly switches between hemispheres. In time intervals in which stimulation in one hemisphere tends to distort songs, stimulation in the other hemisphere is mostly ineffective, revealing an idiosyncratic form of motor dominance that bounces back and forth between hemispheres like a virtual ping-pong ball. The intervals of lateralized effectiveness are broadly distributed and are unrelated to simple spectral and temporal song features. Such interhemispheric switching could be an important dynamical aspect of neural coordination that may have evolved from simpler pattern generator circuits.
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ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060250