news.thinkgene.com

Birdsong is the primary model system that helps scientists understand how the brain produces complex sequences of learned behavior, such as playing the piano. In songbirds, there are many interconnected brain regions that play specific and important role in the production of song. These brain regions are known as "song control nuclei." Two song control nuclei, the High Vocal Center (HVC) and the robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA), are especially important for birdsong because damage to either prevents the bird from singing altogether. It was hypothesized that either HVC or RA could orchestrate the rhythm of the bird's song, acting like a sort of biological metronome, but the technology did not exist to identify which song control nucleus might play this role -- until now. In an elegant combination of physics and biology, two researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge invented a tiny new device that allowed them to identify HVC as regulating the rhythm of birdsong.