Accelerated redevelopment of vocal skills is preceded by lasting reorganization of the song motor circuitry
- Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Germany
- Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM), Spain
- Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
- University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
- University of Antwerp, Belgium
Abstract
Complex motor skills take considerable time and practice to learn. Without continued practice the level of skill performance quickly degrades, posing a problem for the timely utilization of skilled motor behaviors. Here we quantified the recurring development of vocal motor skills and the accompanying changes in synaptic connectivity in the brain of a songbird, while manipulating skill performance by consecutively administrating and withdrawing testosterone. We demonstrate that a songbird with prior singing experience can significantly accelerate the re-acquisition of vocal performance. We further demonstrate that an increase in vocal performance is accompanied by a pronounced synaptic pruning in the forebrain vocal motor area HVC, a reduction that is not reversed when birds stop singing. These results provide evidence that lasting synaptic changes in the motor circuitry are associated with the savings of motor skills, enabling a rapid recovery of motor performance under environmental time constraints.
Data availability
SQL data of extracted song features for each individual have been deposited in Dryad.Further source data files have been provided for Figure 2, Figure 2 -figure supplement 1, Figure 3, Figure 3 -figure supplement 1, Figure 4, Figure 4 -figure supplement 1, Figure 4 -figure supplement 2, Figure 5.
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Data from: Vocal motor experiences consolidate the vocal motor circuitry and accelerate future vocal skill developmentDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.kb814nh.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (701660)
- Michiel Vellema
National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (K-115970)
- Sándor Zsebők
Interuniversity Attraction Poles (IUAP-NIMI-P6/38)
- Annemie Van der Linden
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Manfred Gahr
National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (K-129215)
- Sándor Zsebők
National Research, Development and Innovation Office Hungary (PD-115730)
- Sándor Zsebők
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Experimental procedures were conducted according to the guidelines of the Federation of European Animal Science Associations (FELASA) and approved by the Ethical Committee on animal experiments of the University of Antwerp (protocol number: 2007-14) .
Copyright
© 2019, Vellema et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Accelerated redevelopment of vocal skills is preceded by lasting reorganization of the song motor circuitry
eLife 8:e43194.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43194
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