= Michael S. Brainard
{c}
<Michael S. Brainard> is a researcher in <neuroscience> who studies how experience shapes <sensorimotor learning>. His work uses <songbirds> to connect measured behavior with the activity of the <nervous system>. Song offers a particularly useful task because a young bird first hears a tutor and then uses <auditory feedback> to refine its own performance.<Research profile of Michael Brainard at UCSF>[Research summary: sensory and sensorimotor stages of song learning]{ref}
In a 2009 study with <Samuel J. Sober>, adult <Bengalese finches> heard electronically shifted <pitch> through custom <headphones>. The birds changed their own <pitch> in the opposite direction and returned toward baseline when normal <auditory feedback> resumed. Thus an apparently stable adult skill could be actively maintained by <feedback control>, rather than being an unchanging motor program.<Adult birdsong is actively maintained by error correction by Samuel J. Sober and Michael S. Brainard>[Abstract and Figure 1: feedback perturbation and compensation]{ref}
\Image[https://neurograd.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra15871/files/styles/180x180/public/brainard2.jpg?h=9cbff3b9&itok=pZKFUWDY]
{title=Michael S. Brainard, institutional portrait from the UCSF Neuroscience Graduate Program.}
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