User:Ped36/Song-selective neurons in songbirds

Extant songbirds (Order: Passeriformes) belong to two distinct groups: the "oscines" and "suboscines". Oscine songbirds have a highly developed vocal apparatus and a complex system of neural pathways exclusively devoted to 1) song learning (the anterior forebrain pathway), and 2) the production of learned song (the song motor pathway). They also possess a specialized auditory pathway that plays an important role in selective song perception and neural processing.