Department of Psychology and Neurosciences Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720-1650, USA
Understanding song perception and singing behavior in birds
requires the study of auditory processing of complex sounds
throughout the avian brain. We can divide the basics of auditory
perception into two general processes: (1) encoding, the process
whereby sound is transformed into neural activity and (2) decoding,
the process whereby patterns of neural activity take on perceptual
meaning and therefore guide behavioral responses to sounds.
In birdsong research, most studies have focused on the decoding
process: What are the responses of the specialized auditory
neurons in the song control system? and What do they mean for
the bird? Recently, new techniques addressing both encoding
and decoding have been developed for use in songbirds. Here,
we first describe some powerful methods for analyzing what acoustical
aspects of complex sounds like songs are encoded by auditory
processing neurons in songbird brain. These methods include
the estimation and analysis of spectro-temporal receptive fields
(STRFs) for auditory neurons. Then we discuss the decoding methods
that have been used to understand how songbird neurons may discriminate
among different songs and other sounds based on mean spike-count
rates.
http://psychology.berkeley.edu/directories/facultypages/theunissenresearch.html
