The human can transmit knowledge to the next generations through imitation, which contributed the development of technologies and cultures. Although imitation is a rare ability in the animal kingdom, songbirds can precisely copy the song of others and transmit the song across generations, thereby forming a culture.
We previously found the neural circuitry underlying the imitative behavior of a songbird species, zebra finch (Tanaka et al., 2018). In a nucleus called the periaqueductal gray (PAG) in the midbrain of young zebra finches, dopamine-secreting neurons are strongly activated by mature songs of a live adult male, the most appropriate imitation model. These neurons release dopamine into a sensorimotor cortex HVC, which is a nucleus essential to singing, and trigger imitation by forming the song memory in the HVC. We are now interested in how the songbird brain encodes the appropriate imitation model, and how neurons in HVC drive the imitation process, in which young songbirds gradually modify their song to make it more similar to the tutor song.