How Perception Guides Production in Birdsong Learning

A c.:omputational model of song learning in the song sparrow (M elospiza melodia) learns to categorize the different syllables of a song sparrow song and uses this categorization to train itself to reproduce song. The model fills a crucial gap in the computational explanation of birdsong learning by exploring the organization of perception in songbirds. It shows how competitive learning may lead to the organization of a specific nucleus in the bird brain, replicates the song production results of a previous model (Doya and Sejnowski, 1995), and demonstrates how perceptual learning can guide production through reinforcement learning.