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Sombrilla

The University of Texas at San Antonio Online Magazine

Investigations

Birdsong

From the pages of UTSA Catalyst

Bird

A small bird chirps a song somewhere in the trees above. The song plays over and over, and other birds join the chorus, each with its own unique melody. While these songs may conjure pastoral, peaceful feelings for many, for assistant professor of biology Todd Troyer they stir up thoughts of complex sequences of brain cell activity.

A small bird chirps a song somewhere in the trees above. The song plays over and over, and other birds join the chorus, each with its own unique melody. While these songs may conjure pastoral, peaceful feelings for many, for assistant professor of biology Todd Troyer they stir up thoughts of complex sequences of brain cell activity.

Troyer maintains a nest of nearly 50 birds whose songs he listens to not for pleasure, but in hopes of shedding light on the mysteries of the human brain.

After receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, Troyer accepted a postdoctoral position in the W.M. Keck Center for Integrative Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2007, he joined UTSA’s Department of Biology and began using computational methods based on his background in mathematics to conduct research in the UTSA Neurosciences Institute.

Along with bats and aquatic mammals, birds are the only known animals to learn to “speak” the way humans do—by imitating adults. Troyer’s research focuses on zebra finches, a small bird that is native to Australia.

Birdsongs are used as a model for understanding how the neurons that control learned behaviors work in human brains. Troyer says there are similarities between bird and human brains, both in speech development and in neurological diseases. There are two circuits in particular, he says: those that control learning and our ability to change behavior, and those that produce a certain behavioral task. In normal behavior, the two circuits are balanced; however, with some disorders, the ability to switch off the circuit for producing a particular task is impaired. Understanding how the brain balances the firing of the two circuits in birds’ brains may help in understanding how to control Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and even Parkinson’s disease.

- Amanda Beck

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