A study by Duke University neuroscientists uncovers the role of dopamine in guiding song learning in juvenile zebra finches.

Learn how Zebra finches' natural drive to learn their songs makes them masters of their craft — and what we can learn from ...

Qi was able to show that another chemical messenger called acetylcholine can trigger dopamine release in the bird’s brain ...

As the birds gradually mastered their tunes, the team also measured the level of dopamine released in the birds' basal ganglia, a part of the brain involved in learning new motor skills.

Zebra finches learn their courtship songs early in life by first listening to their fathers and memorizing the melodies.

The basal ganglia are a set of subcortical structures that interact with the cerebral cortex to regulate motor, cognitive and affective function through reinforcement learning and action selection.

We're all familiar with Pavlovian conditioning, in which a reward-anticipatory behavior follows a reward-predicting stimulus. Perhaps you experience it yourself when passing a cafe or restaurant and ...

Think people with hair-pulling or skin-picking habits can “just stop”? Science reveals why it’s not about willpower—and what ...

To build the map, researchers at Columbia University and the University of Bordeaux took a slice of a frozen human brain and, ...

The biological roots of Tourette disorder occur in the basal ganglia, structures deep in the brain involved in the control of movement—particularly learned motor routines and habits. However, the role ...