From behaviour to neurons: what songbird neuroethology can tell us about social life and communication

International audienceSongbirds, along with humans, are one of only six animal groups (including bats, parrots, hummingbirds, cetaceous whales and dolphins) that are known to exhibit vocal learning. Moreover, their song behaviour, whose critical function is to communicate with other birds, can be easily recorded and measured, quantitatively as well as qualitatively, both in the field and in the lab under controlled experimental conditions. Finally, they possess a highly-evolved and well-characterized network of interconnected brain regions that control vocal perception, production and learning. As such, songbirds thus provide researchers with a unique opportunity to directly study vocal behaviour, in relation to its communicative aspects, at the interface between brain and behaviour. Most importantly, given that data on both songbirds and humans suggest that there is a very tight coupling between vocal behaviour and social cognition, songbirds are to date the best-developed model to study communication-related processes in the brain.My talk, while focusing on songbirds, will address the general question of the neural bases of vocal behaviour in relation to its communicative/social aspects. It will be designed to acquaint the audience with the most recent advances obtained in the study of the neural bases of vocal communication by using an integrative, systems-level approach that goes from field studies of distant populations to electrophysiological recordings of brain activity in the lab. Thus, I will present data showing how field observations and a deep knowledge of natural behaviour led us to design neuroethological studies that give us cues about sensory, perceptual and cognitive processing of social information in the European starling, a highly social songbird that exhibits a very complex and plastic song behaviour