Michale Fee: 2011 Allen Institute for Brain Science Symposium

Michale Fee, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Prime movers of the brain: Localizing neural circuits that drive complex motor behaviors"

How does the brain generate complex sequential behaviors? How does the human brain know how to move our bodies in dynamic ways, allowing us to successfully play sports or write a poem? Searching for the answer to these questions, Dr. Fee contends that the first goal is to identify a circuit of neurons responsible for behavior, and then to understand how it generates that behavior. This process has been done for swimming behavior in the worm C. elegans, but C. elegans has only about 300 neurons in its whole nervous system; Fee is looking at a larger scale -- the song of the Zebra finch. Through his research he is discovering that two different systems are controlling song behavior in the baby bird and the adult bird. As a young chick, the Zebra finch's song is erratic and babbling but as it grows up and learns to produce the highly systematic, repeatable song characteristic of an adult male Zebra finch, song production is controlled more heavily by a different part of the brain. Dr. Fee has found that the song of the young Zebra finch is controlled mostly by the HVC (higher vocal center), while the song of the adult Zebra finch is controlled more heavily by the LMAN (lateral magnocellular nucleus of the nidopallium). This research is leading Dr. Fee to identify where in the brain lie circuits that generate dynamic behavior sequences.