OEB Seminar Series: Michael Long

Michael Long
Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Physiology, Department of Neuroscience 
Professor, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
NYU Grossman School of Medicine

How Parrots Speak

Abstract: Careful study of the vocal production circuitry in songbirds and rodents has greatly advanced our understanding of the cortical and subcortical mechanisms supporting human speech. This seminar focuses on our recent attempts to augment these discoveries by investigating the neural circuits enabling vocal production in the budgerigar, a small parrot. Our laboratory recently uncovered a motor map in the budgerigar brain that represents specific articulatory features, including consonant- and vowel-like sounds as well as pitch. We have begun to investigate a key upstream premotor region that generates hundreds of sequential subroutines capable of driving this forebrain motor map to form distinct vocal objects, with qualities that resemble words. We seek to determine how these vocal objects are used in a social setting, to identify if objects might represent specific items in the environment, and to measure the circuit changes that accompany rapid vocal learning. From this work, we hope to establish a new model system for vocal production that may enable us to address mechanistic questions related to normal and disordered lexical access.

Host: Professor Bence Olveczky