Zebra_Finch_Functional_Connectivity/README.md

Zebra Finch Functional Connectivity

This repository contains key supporting data for the following article (DOI):

Title

Experience selectively alters functional connectivity within a neural network to predict learned behavior in juvenile songbirds

Authors

Elliot A. Layden¹, Huibo Li¹, Kathryn E. Schertz¹, Marc G. Berman^1,2,‡, Sarah E. London^1,2,3,‡

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637

² Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637

³ The Institute for Mind and Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637

^‡ These authors contributed equally to this work

Abstract

One of the central questions of neuroethology is how specialized brain areas communicate to form dynamic networks that support complex cognitive and behavioral processes. Developmental song learning in the male zebra finch songbird (Taeniopygia guttata) provides a unique window into the complex interplay among sensory, sensorimotor, and motor network nodes. The foundation of a young male's song structure is the sensory memory he forms during interactions with an adult "tutor." However, even in the absence of tutoring, juveniles produce a song-like behavior. Thus, by controlling a juvenile male's tutor exposure, we can examine how tutor experience affects distributed neural networks and how network properties predict behavior. Here, we used longitudinal, resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) functional connectivity (FC) and song analyses to examine known nodes of the song network, and to allow discovery of additional areas functionally related to song learning. We present three major novel findings. First, tutor deprivation significantly reduced the global FC strength of the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) subregion of the auditory forebrain required for sensory song learning. Second, tutor deprivation resulted in reduced FC between NCM and cerebellar lobule VI, a region analogous to areas that regulate limbic, social, and language functions in humans. Third, NCM FC strength predicted song stereotypy and mediated the relationship between tutoring and stereotypy, thus completing the link between experience, neural network properties, and complex learned behavior.

Contents:

results

• NIfTI files containing t-statistic maps for ICC and S2V analyses, as well as the ICC- and S2V-based clusters identified

data

• Contains neuroimaging data for all 68 scans, motion correction (MoCo) files, and preprocessing intermediates

physiology_data

• Contains physiology data (body temperature, isoflurane dose, respiratory rate) for each bird/scan in Excel format

subjects_info

• Contains detailed data regarding birds, ages scanned, and scan outcome

templates

• Contains the group-average brain template (NIfTI format) and song system region-of-interest (ROI) files in both anatomical and functional space