The reorganization of neural activity during sleep helps young songbirds to develop the vocal skills they display while awake. Practice, or auditory feedback, may also play a role in learning.

In his home office in Durham, Duke neuroscientist Richard Mooney shows a series of images of a bird's brain on song. In one, what looks like a pointillist painting illustrates a young zebra finch's ...

Social interactions promote vocal learning, but the impact of social feedback on this process and its neural circuitry is not well understood. We studied song imitation in juvenile male zebra finches ...