It takes songbirds and baseball pitchers thousands of repetitions—a choreography of many muscle movements—to develop an irresistible trill or a killer slider. Now, scientists have discovered that the male Bengalese finch uses a simple mental computation and an uncanny memory to create its near-perfect mate-catching melody—a finding that could have implications for rehabilitating people with neuromuscular diseases and injuries.

Young male Bengalese finches practice their boisterous mating song hundreds of times a day, comparing their melody to the songs of their tutors. By the time they are adults, they have zeroed in on a “successful” pitch for each note in their song. But throughout life they continuously monitor their tune, working to maintain it in the face of such factors as aging, hormone levels, muscular injuries, and illness.

An automated therapeutic strategy?

In their study, neuroscientists with the University of California, San Francisco, (UCSF) explored the way in which the songbirds learn to perfect and maintain their song, a model of how one learns—and might relearn—fine motor skills when provided with only simple reinforcement signals of success or failure.

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