Global S&T Development Trend Analysis Platform of Resources and Environment
Advanced deep-sea imaging tools yield insights into the structure and function of mucus filtration houses built by midwater giant larvaceans.
Many animals build complex structures to aid in their survival, but very few are built exclusively from materials that animals create (1,2). In the midwaters of the ocean, mucoid structures are readily secreted by numerous animals, and serve many vital functions(3,4). However, little is known about these mucoid structures owing to the challenges of observing them in the deep sea. Among these mucoid forms, the '
Neurons in the canary premotor cortex homologue encode past song phrases and transitions, carrying information relevant to future choice of phrases as '
Coordinated skills such as speech or dance involve sequences of actions that follow syntactic rules in which transitions between elements depend on the identities and order of past actions. Canary songs consist of repeated syllables called phrases, and the ordering of these phrases follows long-range rules(1)in which the choice of what to sing depends on the song structure many seconds prior. The neural substrates that support these long-range correlations are unknown. Here, using miniature head-mounted microscopes and cell-type-specific genetic tools, we observed neural activity in the premotor nucleus HVC(2-4)as canaries explored various phrase sequences in their repertoire. We identified neurons that encode past transitions, extending over four phrases and spanning up to four seconds and forty syllables. These neurons preferentially encode past actions rather than future actions, can reflect more than one song history, and are active mostly during the rare phrases that involve history-dependent transitions in song. These findings demonstrate that the dynamics of HVC include '