Automated inference of respiratory and syringeal biomechanical trajectories from birdsong acoustics

Abstract

Songbirds, in particular zebra finches ( Taeniopygia guttata), provide a powerful model for investigating the neural mechanisms of learned vocal behavior. Researchers typically rely on the acoustic structure of birdsong to quantify vocal behavior. As a more direct measure of motor control, we present VIBE: Vocal acoustic Inversion to Biomechanical Estimates, an open-source pipeline that recovers the biomechanical control parameters of song production from the pitch and amplitude of the acoustic waveform. Biomechanical models of the songbird syrinx describe vocal production with two continuously varying parameters: α and β, representing subsyringeal air sac pressure and syringeal muscle tension, respectively. Recovering these parameters from song acoustics provides a motor-based coordinate system against which neural activity or other dependent variables can be directly compared. Because α and β are the coupled control parameters of a nonlinear oscillator, their joint recovery is non-trivial. VIBE addresses this through iterative optimization of the governing normal-form equations. We validate VIBE against recorded air sac pressure across 44 songs from twelve birds, showing that the recovered α corresponds to empirically measured air sac pressure. Pairing VIBE with Neuropixels recordings from RA in five birds, we find that RA activity is well predicted by the recovered parameters, and that α and β add predictive power beyond the acoustic features of song. By recovering biomechanical control parameters from the acoustic signal, VIBE makes the biomechanical coordinate system of song production accessible to the broader songbird research community.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Neurophysiology, 2026 · DOI ↗