Principal Investigator Michale Fee
Professor Fee studies how the brain learns and generates complex sequential behaviors, with a focus on the songbird as a model system. Birdsong is a complex behavior that young birds learn from their fathers and it provides an ideal system to study the neural basis of learned behavior. Because the parts of the bird's brain that control song learning are closely related to human circuits that are disrupted in brain disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, Fee hopes the lessons learned from birdsong will provide new clues to the causes and possible treatment of these conditions.
Playing an instrument or riding a bike requires a complex sequence of movements. Michale Fee is interested in the brain mechanisms underlying this kind of learned behavior. By studying birdsong, Fee hopes to understand the neural and biophysical mechanisms underlying the generation and learning of complex sequences, and to develop advanced optical and electrical techniques for measurement of brain activity in behaving animals. He has recently shown that a brain area known as the higher vocal center (HVC) works like the conductor of an orchestra to control the tempo of the song.