PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Gilles Cornez AU - Clémentine Collignon AU - Wendt Müller AU - Charlotte A. Cornil AU - Gregory F. Ball AU - Jacques Balthazart TI - Development of perineuronal nets during ontogeny correlates with sensorimotor vocal learning in canaries AID - 10.1523/ENEURO.0361-19.2020 DP - 2020 Mar 10 TA - eneuro PG - ENEURO.0361-19.2020 4099 - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2020/03/10/ENEURO.0361-19.2020.short 4100 - http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2020/03/10/ENEURO.0361-19.2020.full AB - Songbirds are a powerful model to study vocal learning given that aspects of the underlying behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms are analogous in many ways to mechanisms involved in speech learning. Perineuronal nets (PNN) represent one of the mechanisms controlling the closing of sensitive periods for vocal learning in the songbird brain. In zebra finches, PNN develop around parvalbumin-expressing interneurons in selected song control nuclei during ontogeny and their development is delayed if juveniles are deprived of a tutor. However, song learning in zebra finches takes place during a relatively short period of development and it is difficult to determine whether PNN development correlates with the end of the sensory or the sensorimotor learning period. Canaries have a longer period of sensorimotor vocal learning, spanning over their first year of life so that it should be easier to test whether PNN development correlates with the end of sensory or sensorimotor vocal learning. Here we quantified PNN around PV-interneurons in the brain of male canaries from hatching until the first breeding season and analyzed in parallel the development of their song. PNN development around PV-interneurons specifically took place and their number reached its maximum around the end of the sensorimotor learning stage, well after the end of sensory vocal learning, and correlated with song development. This suggests that PNN are specifically involved in the termination of the sensitive period for sensorimotor vocal learning.Significance statement Perineuronal nets (PNN) are accumulations of components of the extracellular matrix that form usually around parvalbumin-expressing inhibitory neurons. PNN have been associated with various forms of experience- or activity-dependent learning in mammals where they appear to control the end of sensitive periods for learning. It was recently demonstrated that PNN are associated with vocal learning in juveniles and adults of several species of songbirds, but the specific aspect of the learning process they control has not been formally identified. We demonstrate here that during ontogeny in male canaries, PNN develop essentially during the sensorimotor phase of song learning, which suggests that they represent part of the neuronal mechanisms underlying song crystallization.