The role of ventral tegmental area GABA neurons in behavior is unclear. Here, authors show that VTA GABA but not dopamine neurons integrate positive and negative valence to encode motivational conflic...

Learning by imitation is the foundation for verbal and musical expression, but its underlying neural basis remains obscure. A juvenile male zebra finch imitates the multisyllabic song of an adult tutor in a process that depends on a song-specialized cortico-basal ganglia circuit, affording a powerful system to identify the synaptic substrates of imitative motor learning. Plasticity at a particular set of cortico-basal ganglia synapses is hypothesized to drive rapid learning-related changes in song before these changes are subsequently consolidated in downstream circuits. Nevertheless, this hypothesis is untested and the synaptic locus where learning initially occurs is unknown. By combining a computational framework to quantify song learning with synapse-specific optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations within and directly downstream of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit, we identified the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapses that drive the acquisition and expression of rapid vocal changes during juvenile song learning and characterized the hours-long timescale over which these changes consolidate. Furthermore, transiently augmenting postsynaptic activity in the basal ganglia briefly accelerates learning rates and persistently alters song, demonstrating a direct link between basal ganglia activity and rapid learning. These results localize the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapses that enable a juvenile songbird to learn to sing and reveal the circuit logic and behavioral timescales of this imitative learning paradigm. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. National Institutes of Health, K99 NS144525 (DCS), F32 MH132152 (DCS), F31 HD098772 (SB), R01 NS099288 (RM), RF1 NS118424 (RM and JP)

The lesion network mapping method links diverse brain lesions to similar functional brain networks, reflecting general brain organization rather than disorder-specific circuits.

Using quantitative brain imaging, the authors show opposite fMRI BOLD signal to metabolic activity due to variable oxygen extraction across the human cortex. This questions the canonical interpretatio...

Antidepressant treatment shouldn't be a guessing game. RELMED is working towards using advanced research to predict which medication is most likely to help each person along their individual path to recovery.

Decision-making is a central function of adaptive behaviour in biological agents. However, strategies for adaptive decision-making can vary substantially across species. Here, we aim to extend the co...

The “sign-tracking” and “goal-tracking” model of individual variation in associative learning permits the identification of rats with different cue reactivity and predisposition to addiction-like beha...

Parcellation of the cortex into functionally modular brain areas is foundational to neuroscience. Here, Hayden, Heilbronner and Yoo question the central status of brain areas in neuroscience from the ...

The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is a small subcortical region that plays a critical role in a wide array of functions, including emotio…