Neural mechanisms of motor skill flexibility in songbirds

Even well-learned motor skills must be performed differently depending on context (eg, the skills involved in riding a mountain bike and road bike will generally differ). At the same time, learning must take advantage of the similarities between similar skills performed in different contexts by transferring, or generalizing, learning gained in one context to performance of similar skills in other contexts (eg, it would be useful if learning first how to ride a road bike makes it easier to then learn how to ride a mountain bike). The flexibility of motor skills, therefore, depends on the ability for the nervous system to adaptively balance the generalization and specificity of learned modifications. This adaptive balance is perhaps best illustrated in sequential motor skills, such as speech or dance (indeed “sequential” applies to a wide range of skills). These skills depend on the reuse of individual gestures in multiple sequential contexts …