Nonlinear Dynamics and the Synthesis of Zebra Finch Song

Abstract

Behavior emerges as the interaction between a nervous system, a peripheral biomechanical device and the environment. In birdsong production, this observation is particularly important: songbirds are an adequate animal model to unveil how brain structures reconfigure themselves during learning of a complex behavior as song. Therefore, it is important to understand which features of behavior are controlled by independent tuning of neurophysiological parameters, and which are constrained by the biomechanics of the peripheral vocal organ. In this work, we show that many of the acoustic features in the Zebra finch song are in fact conditioned by the biomechanics involved.