Trial-to-trial variability in the execution of movements and motor skills is ubiquitous and
widely considered to be the unwanted consequence of a noisy nervous system. However …

Rapid and reversible manipulations of neural activity in behaving animals are transforming
our understanding of brain function. An important assumption underlying much of this work …

Neural sequences are a fundamental feature of brain dynamics underlying diverse
behaviours, but the mechanisms by which they develop during learning remain unknown …

Highlights•Adaptive vocal development extends beyond imitation and template-
matching.•Songbirds and humans share the capacity to converge towards species-typical …

Songbirds learn and produce complex sequences of vocal gestures. Adult birdsong requires
premotor nucleus HVC, in which projection neurons (PNs) burst sparsely at stereotyped …

Vocal imitation involves incorporating instructive auditory information into relevant motor
circuits through processes that are poorly understood. In zebra finches, we found that …

The evolution of human language is shrouded in mystery as it is unparalleled in the animal
kingdom. Whereas vocal learning is crucial for the development of speech in humans, it …

While acquiring motor skills, animals transform their plastic motor sequences to match
desired targets. However, because both the structure and temporal position of individual …

How do forebrain and brainstem circuits interact to produce temporally precise and
reproducible behaviors? Birdsong is an elaborate, temporally precise, and stereotyped …

From the first months of life, human infants produce “protophones,” speech-like, non-cry
sounds, presumed absent, or only minimally present in other apes. But there have been no …