Discovery Helps To Unlock Brain's Speech-learning Mechanism

4. Bottjer collaborated with lead author Jennifer Achiro, a graduate student at USC, to examine the activity of neurons in songbirds brains using electrodes to record the activity of individual neurons. In the basal ganglia - a complex system of neurons in the brain responsible for, among other things, procedural learning - Bottjer and Achiro were able to isolate two different types of neurons in young songbirds: cara diet herbalife ones that were activated only when the birds heard themselves singing, and others that were activated only when the birds heard the songs of adult birds that they were trying to imitate. The two sets of neurons allow the songbirds to recognize both their current behavior and a goal behavior that they would like to achieve. "The process of learning speech requires the brain to compare feedback of current vocal behavior to a memory of target vocal sounds," Achiro said. "The discovery of these two distinct populations of neurons means that this brain region contains separate neural representation of current and goal behaviors.