Pavel A. Puzerey

The paper shows that dopaminergic signals for reward and performance shift during courtship in songbirds, with signals routed through distinct pathways based on social context.

The paper shows that movement-related neuronal activity in the ventral pallidum and dopaminergic midbrain of singing birds is gated by behavioral state, switching from movement-locked to song-syllable-locked during singing.

The paper identifies a ventral basal ganglia region in songbirds that computes prediction error signals and sends them to the VTA, revealing an actor-critic circuit motif in song learning.