Michale Fee studies how the brain learns and generates complex sequential behaviors, focusing on the songbird as a model system. Birdsong is a complex behavior that young birds learn from their fathers and it provides an ideal system to study the neural basis of learned behavior. Because the parts of the bird’s brain that control song learning are closely related to human circuits that are disrupted in brain disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, Fee hopes the lessons learned from birdsong will provide new clues to the causes and possible treatment of these conditions.