The Neural Mechanisms of Duet Singing

Many organisms coordinate rhythmic motor actions with those of a partner to generate cooperative social behavior, such as dancing with a partner or duet singing. The neural mechanisms that enable the rhythmic interindividual coordination of motor actions are, however, not well understood. We study duet singing in songbirds to uncover how the brain controls the coordination of vocal production between two individuals, and what kind of acoustic information duetting animals are listening to in order to produce a well-coordinated duet song. Is it their own vocalization, those of the partner, or both?

To answer these questions, we use an approach that enables the simultaneous recording of individual vocal activity and multiunit neural activity in pairs of duetting songbirds that range freely in their natural habitat.

This project is done in collaboration with Prof. Manfred Gahr (Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Germany) and Dr. Cornelia Vogt (University of Pretoria, South Africa).