Selected Publications

Songbirds learn and produce complex sequences of vocal gestures. Adult birdsong requires premotor nucleus HVC, in which projection neurons (PNs) burst sparsely at stereotyped times in the song. It has been hypothesized that PN bursts, as a population, form a continuous sequence, while a different model of HVC function proposes that both HVC PN and interneuron activity is tightly organized around motor gestures. Using a large dataset of PNs and interneurons recorded in singing birds, we test several predictions of these models. We find that PN bursts in adult birds are continuously and nearly uniformly distributed throughout song. However, we also find that PN and interneuron firing rates exhibit significant 10-Hz rhythmicity locked to song syllables, peaking prior to syllable onsets and suppressed prior to offsets—a pattern that predominates PN and interneuron activity in HVC during early stages of vocal learning.
Neuron

Recent Publications

  • Rhythmic Continuous-Time Coding in the Songbird Analog of Vocal Motor Cortex

    Details Pub Med

  • Growth and splitting of neural sequences in songbird vocal development

    Details Pub Med

  • 3D LASER ABLATION TOMOGRAPHY AND SPECTROGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

    Details FPO

Teaching

I was a teaching assistant for the following courses at MIT:

  • 9.20: Animal Behavior
  • 9.01: Introduction to Neuroscience

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