Ruidong Chen

The paper shows budgerigar parrots use mixed vocal-gestural neural signals for learned communication, with single neurons representing both song and headbob gestures.

This study investigates how the anterior cingulate cortex integrates experiential and observational evidence in a two-player game, revealing neural mechanisms for dynamic belief updating.

The paper identifies a songbird VP-LHb-VTA pathway involved in vocal learning, showing that LHb lesions disrupt normal vocal development.

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.

The paper shows that spatially segregated motor circuits in vocal learners solve a credit assignment problem in multi-objective reinforcement learning by allowing target-specific reinforcement signals.