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News
Professor Robert Miller is receiving the 2008 Proctor Medal from the
Association for Research in Vision and Opthamology. The award, the
association's highest honor, is presented annually for outstanding research
in basic or clinical sciences as applied to opthamology. He was chosen for
his seminal discoveries on the basic mechanisms through which nerve cells of
the retina communicate.
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Announcements
Murtaza Adam, an undergraduate member of the Nick lab, prepared the cover for the July 2007 Journal of Neurophysiology.
Crandall, Adam, Kinnischtzke, and Nick found that neural activity increases during songbird vocal learning. The figure depicts a sleeping young zebra finch with a background of juvenile brain activity. Much like humans, zebra finch songbirds go through a 'babbling' phase as they learn their song. During this 'babbling' period, neural activity increases in the part of the brain that controls singing. Strikingly, the overnight stability of the song behavior directly correlated with the amount of neural activity. These data indicate that neural sleep activity helps the bird 'remember' his song. During the sensitive period for vocal learning, less activity may allow him to 'forget' his song and start fresh the next day. Understanding the neural mechanisms of vocal learning in songbirds may illuminate the development of speech in humans.
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