Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Neurobiology
How Do Adult Songbirds Learn New Sounds? Using Neuromodulators To Probe The Function Of The Auditory Association Cortex, Matheus Macedo-Lima
How Do Adult Songbirds Learn New Sounds? Using Neuromodulators To Probe The Function Of The Auditory Association Cortex, Matheus Macedo-Lima
Doctoral Dissertations
The ability to associate sounds and outcomes is vital in the life history of many species. Animals constantly assess the soundscape for cues associated with threats, competitors, allies, mates or prey, and experience is crucial for those associations. For vocal learning species such as humans and songbirds, learning sounds (i.e. perception and association learning) is also the first step in the process of vocal learning. Auditory learning is thought to depend on high-order cortical brain structures, where sounds and meaning are bound. In songbirds, the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) is part of the auditory association cortex and is known to be …
Experience-Dependent Changes In Nucleus Accumbens Activity Predict Cued Approach Learning: Contribution Of Nmda Receptors, Mercedes Vega Villar
Experience-Dependent Changes In Nucleus Accumbens Activity Predict Cued Approach Learning: Contribution Of Nmda Receptors, Mercedes Vega Villar
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Animals learn associations between environmental cues and the natural rewards they predict (e.g., food, water, sex). As a result, reward-predictive cues come to trigger vigorous reward-seeking responses. Many neurons in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) become excited upon presentation of an already-learned reward-predictive cue. These NAc responses encode the motivational value of the cue and are necessary for the expression of the subsequent approach behavior. However, the precise temporal relationship between the emergence of cue-evoked excitations in the NAc and the acquisition of cued approach behavior remains unknown. In Experiment 1, NAc activity was recorded as rats learned to approach a …