Yunbok Kim's research while affiliated with Korea Brain Research Institute and other places

Publications (5)

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Many songbirds learn to produce songs through vocal practice in early life and continue to produce many renditions of learned songs daily throughout their lifetime. While it is well-known that adult songbirds sing as part of a mating ritual, additional functions of their singing behavior are not fully understood. Here, we demonstrate that adult sin...
Article
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The zebra finch (ZF) and the Bengalese finch (BF) are animal models that have been commonly used for neurobiological studies on vocal learning. Although they largely share the brain structure for vocal learning and production, BFs produce more complex and variable songs than ZFs, providing a great opportunity for comparative studies to understand h...
Article
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Songbirds, such as zebra finches, spontaneously produce many song renditions for vocal practice even in the absence of apparent recipients throughout their lives. Such “undirected singing” is driven by intrinsic motivation, which arises within individuals for internal satisfaction without immediate external rewards. Intrinsic motivation for undirec...
Article
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Behaviors driven by intrinsic motivation are critical for development and optimization of physical and brain functions, but their underlying mechanisms are not well studied due to the complexity and autonomy of the behavior. Songbirds, such as zebra finches, offer a unique opportunity to study neural substrates of intrinsic motivation because they...
Article
Songbirds, such as the zebra finch, are a popular animal model for studying the neural basis of vocal and complex skill learning. Adult male zebra finches produce courtship song toward females (referred to as 'directed song') and recording and analyzing sounds of directed song along with underlying neural activity is important for investigating beh...

Citations

... Curiosity, for instance, is a form of intrinsic motivation, which is well-exhibited by infants and children [108]. Another example is the completely intrinsic desire of a songbird to sing in isolation, despite it not necessarily being beneficial to the bird [143]. On the other hand, external motivation can be presented in the form of goals or rewards in the environment, either in concrete form, such as food, or abstract, such as appreciation. ...