Sensory feedback is important for the learning and control of a variety of behaviors. Vocal motor production in songbirds is a powerful model system to study sensory influences on behavior because the learning, maintenance, and control of song are critically dependent on auditory feedback. Based on previous behavioral and neural experiments, it has been hypothesized that songs produced in isola...

Many animals exhibit flexible behaviors that they can adjust to increase reward or avoid harm (learning by positive or aversive reinforcement). But what neural mechanisms allow them to restore their original behavior (motor program) after reinforcement is withdrawn? One possibility is that motor restoration relies on brain areas that have a role in memorization but no role in either motor produ...

An intriguing phenomenon in the neurobiology of language is lateralization: the dominant role of one hemisphere in a particular function. Lateralization is not exclusive to language because lateral differences are observed in other sensory modalities, behaviors, and animal species. Despite much scientific attention, the function of lateralization, its possible dependence on experience, and the ...

OBJECTIVE To characterize the impulse noise exposure and auditory risk for air rifle users for both youth and adults. DESIGN Acoustic characteristics were examined and the auditory risk estimates were evaluated using contemporary damage-risk criteria for unprotected adult listeners and the 120-dB peak limit and LAeq75 exposure limit suggested by the World Health Organization (1999) for childr...

Songbirds provide a powerful animal model for investigating how the brain uses sensory feedback to correct behavioral errors. Here, we review a recent study in which we used online manipulations of auditory feedback to quantify the relationship between sensory error size, motor variability, and vocal plasticity. We found that although inducing small auditory errors evoked relatively large compe...

p = 0.262). Neither difference proved statistically significant. We had hoped to recruit much larger numbers of residents and family carers but our strict inclusion criteria proved an obstacle. This greatly limited the study’s statistical power. These pilot study results look promising nonetheless and warrant further exploration. Older people make increasing use of the internet and many nursing...

The ability to orient toward visual, auditory, or tactile stimuli is an important skill for systems intended to interact with and explore their environment. In the brain of mammalian vertebrates, the Superior Colliculus is specialized for integrating multi-modal sensory information, and for using this information to orient the animal to the source sensory stimuli, such as noisy, moving objects....

Hormones regulate and modulate many physiological processes of the body including the nervous, cardiac, respiratory, and gastrointestinal systems. So, it is not surprising that hormonal regulation can manifest itself at the sensory level as well. The present report reviews some recent studies on the relations between several key hormones— including aldosterone and sex hormones—and auditory proc...

Sensory feedback is crucial for learning and performing many behaviors, but its role in the execution of complex motor sequences is poorly understood. To address this, we consider the forebrain nucleus HVC in the songbird, which contains the premotor circuitry for song production and receives multiple convergent sensory inputs. During singing, projection neurons within HVC exhibit precisely tim...

For over half a century, the echolocating bat has served as a valuable model in neuroscience to elucidate mechanisms of auditory processing and adaptive behavior in biological sonar. Our article emphasizes the importance of the bat's vocal-motor system to spatial orientation by sonar, and we present this view in the context of three problems that the echolocating bat must solve: (i) auditory sc...