TY - JOUR TI - Acetylcholine acts on songbird premotor circuitry to invigorate vocal output AU - Jaffe, Paul I AU - Brainard, Michael S A2 - Carey, Megan R A2 - Calabrese, Ronald L A2 - Shea, Stephen D A2 - Dudman, Joshua Tate A2 - C Woolley, Sarah VL - 9 PY - 2020 DA - 2020/05/19 SP - e53288 C1 - eLife 2020;9:e53288 DO - 10.7554/eLife.53288 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.53288 AB - Acetylcholine is well-understood to enhance cortical sensory responses and perceptual sensitivity in aroused or attentive states. Yet little is known about cholinergic influences on motor cortical regions. Here we use the quantifiable nature of birdsong to investigate how acetylcholine modulates the cortical (pallial) premotor nucleus HVC and shapes vocal output. We found that dialyzing the cholinergic agonist carbachol into HVC increased the pitch, amplitude, tempo and stereotypy of song, similar to the natural invigoration of song that occurs when males direct their songs to females. These carbachol-induced effects were associated with increased neural activity in HVC and occurred independently of basal ganglia circuitry. Moreover, we discovered that the normal invigoration of female-directed song was also accompanied by increased HVC activity and was attenuated by blocking muscarinic acetylcholine receptors. These results indicate that, analogous to its influence on sensory systems, acetylcholine can act directly on cortical premotor circuitry to adaptively shape behavior. KW - songbird KW - acetylcholine KW - HVC JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -