Achieving perfection through variability: the basal ganglia helped me do it!

Neuron

Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; Neuroscience Graduate Group, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Published: April 2014


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Article Abstract

Motor variability can facilitate motor exploration necessary for learning. In this issue of Neuron, Woolley et al. (2014) record at different stages of the songbird basal ganglia and show that social-context modulation of motor variability first emerges in the pallidum.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.03.010DOI Listing

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