Bengalese finches, songbirds that have been used to research the learning, perception, and production of bird song, are the model system used by Berkeley Lab scientist Kristofer Bouchard and Michael Brainard of UC San Francisco to determine the relationship between song sequence structure and brain activity. As reported in their PNAS article published last week, “Auditory-induced neural dynamics in sensory-motor circuitry predict learned temporal and sequential statistics of birdsong,” the researchers studied how the birds brain forms predictions for the timing and identity of specific “syllables” that it has learned to sing.
Genetic Factors That Influence Body Weight, Neurological Disorders Identified
A new study has identified genetic factors that influence motor performance and body weight in a genetically diverse group of mice. The Lab researchers also found the genes identified in the mice overlap significantly with genes related to neurological disorders and obesity in people. Jian-Hua Mao and Antoine Snijders in the Biological Systems and Engineering Division led the Biosciences research team, which included colleagues in their division (Sasha Langley, Yurong Huang, Michael Hang, Kristofer Bouchard, and Gary Karpen) and the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division (Susan Celniker and Ben Brown). Read more at the Berkeley Lab News Center.
Was this page useful?
Send
