Narrator: This is Science Today. Understanding how the brain
changes while learning may ultimately lead to enabling
rehabilitation in cases where learning has gone awry due to
damage or disease. Michael Brainard, an associate professor in
the department of physiology at the University of California,
San Francisco, studies songbirds to learn more about brain
regions involved in what's called "reinforcement learning."
Brainard: One of the things that we've been able to discover in
studying songbirds is the basal ganglia appear to play a very
important and dedicated role in this form of learning. The
learning benefits from extremely rapid feedback. Narrator:
Researchers in Brainaird's lab used an automated computer
program to provide feedback as songbirds sang, which led to
their quickly learning to change their tune. Brainard: In cases
of rehabilitation or in the cases of behaviors like speech, we
think that it may be particularly useful to adopt some of the
sorts of techniques that we've developed here to moni