Murphy Karagh, James Logan S, Sakata Jon T, Prather Jonathan F
Program in Neuroscience, Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming; and.
Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
J Neurophysiol. 2017 Aug 1;118(2):800-816. doi: 10.1152/jn.00623.2016. Epub 2017 Mar 22.
Sensorimotor integration is the process through which the nervous system creates a link between motor commands and associated sensory feedback. This process allows for the acquisition and refinement of many behaviors, including learned communication behaviors such as speech and birdsong. Consequently, it is important to understand fundamental mechanisms of sensorimotor integration, and comparative analyses of this process can provide vital insight. Songbirds offer a powerful comparative model system to study how the nervous system links motor and sensory information for learning and control. This is because the acquisition, maintenance, and control of birdsong critically depend on sensory feedback. Furthermore, there is an incredible diversity of song organizations across songbird species, ranging from songs with simple, stereotyped sequences to songs with complex sequencing of vocal gestures, as well as a wide diversity of song repertoire sizes. Despite this diversity, the neural circuitry for song learning, control, and maintenance remains highly similar across species. Here, we highlight the utility of songbirds for the analysis of sensorimotor integration and the insights about mechanisms of sensorimotor integration gained by comparing different songbird species. Key conclusions from this comparative analysis are that variation in song sequence complexity seems to covary with the strength of feedback signals in sensorimotor circuits and that sensorimotor circuits contain distinct representations of elements in the vocal repertoire, possibly enabling evolutionary variation in repertoire sizes. We conclude our review by highlighting important areas of research that could benefit from increased comparative focus, with particular emphasis on the integration of new technologies.
感觉运动整合是神经系统在运动指令与相关感觉反馈之间建立联系的过程。这一过程有助于许多行为的习得与完善，包括言语和鸟鸣等习得性交流行为。因此，了解感觉运动整合的基本机制很重要，对此过程的比较分析能够提供至关重要的见解。鸣禽提供了一个强大的比较模型系统，用于研究神经系统如何将运动和感觉信息联系起来以进行学习和控制。这是因为鸟鸣的习得、维持和控制严重依赖于感觉反馈。此外，鸣禽物种间的鸣唱结构存在令人难以置信的多样性，从具有简单、刻板序列的鸣唱到具有复杂发声姿态序列的鸣唱，以及丰富多样的鸣唱曲目大小。尽管存在这种多样性，但跨物种的用于歌曲学习、控制和维持的神经回路仍高度相似。在此，我们强调鸣禽在感觉运动整合分析中的作用，以及通过比较不同鸣禽物种获得的关于感觉运动整合机制的见解。这一比较分析的关键结论是，鸣唱序列复杂性的变化似乎与感觉运动回路中反馈信号的强度相关，并且感觉运动回路包含发声曲目中元素的不同表征，这可能使得曲目大小出现进化变异。我们通过强调一些重要的研究领域来结束我们的综述，这些领域可能会因增加比较研究重点而受益，尤其强调新技术的整合。
