Figures
Millisecond-scale motor encoding in the songbird brain.
Patterns of electrical activity in neurons (voltage traces, top) control skilled behaviors. Representing neural activity as binary "words" (middle) reveals how the brains of songbirds use these electrical patterns to produce vocal output. The precise timing of neural signals appears to be crucial in controlling the elaborate vocal patterns that have fascinated human listeners for centuries (bottom, excerpt from Olivier Messaien's Oiseaux exotiques, which was based on Messaien's transcriptions of birdsong). See Tang et al.
Image Credit: Sam Sober
Citation: (2014) PLoS Biology Issue Image | Vol. 12(12) December 2014. PLoS Biol 12(12): ev12.i12. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pbio.v12.i12
Published: December 22, 2014
Copyright: © 2014 Tang et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Patterns of electrical activity in neurons (voltage traces, top) control skilled behaviors. Representing neural activity as binary "words" (middle) reveals how the brains of songbirds use these electrical patterns to produce vocal output. The precise timing of neural signals appears to be crucial in controlling the elaborate vocal patterns that have fascinated human listeners for centuries (bottom, excerpt from Olivier Messaien's Oiseaux exotiques, which was based on Messaien's transcriptions of birdsong). See Tang et al.
Image Credit: Sam Sober