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Journal ArticleDOI

BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common Themes and Mechanisms

01 Jan 1999-Annual Review of Neuroscience (Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way, P.O. Box 10139, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139, USA)-Vol. 22, Iss: 1, pp 567-631
TL;DR: Human speech and birdsong have numerous parallels, with striking similarities in how sensory experience is internalized and used to shape vocal outputs, and how learning is enhanced during a critical period of development.
Abstract: Human speech and birdsong have numerous parallels. Both humans and songbirds learn their complex vocalizations early in life, exhibiting a strong dependence on hearing the adults they will imitate, as well as themselves as they practice, and a waning of this dependence as they mature. Innate predispositions for perceiving and learning the correct sounds exist in both groups, although more evidence of innate descriptions of species-specific signals exists in songbirds, where numerous species of vocal learners have been compared. Humans also share with songbirds an early phase of learning that is primarily perceptual, which then serves to guide later vocal production. Both humans and songbirds have evolved a complex hierarchy of specialized forebrain areas in which motor and auditory centers interact closely, and which control the lower vocal motor areas also found in nonlearners. In both these vocal learners, however, how auditory feedback of self is processed in these brain areas is surprisingly unclear. Finally, humans and songbirds have similar critical periods for vocal learning, with a much greater ability to learn early in life. In both groups, the capacity for late vocal learning may be decreased by the act of learning itself, as well as by biological factors such as the hormones of puberty. Although some features of birdsong and speech are clearly not analogous, such as the capacity of language for meaning, abstraction, and flexible associations, there are striking similarities in how sensory experience is internalized and used to shape vocal outputs, and how learning is enhanced during a critical period of development. Similar neural mechanisms may therefore be involved.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A dual-stream model of speech processing is outlined that assumes that the ventral stream is largely bilaterally organized — although there are important computational differences between the left- and right-hemisphere systems — and that the dorsal stream is strongly left- Hemisphere dominant.
Abstract: Despite decades of research, the functional neuroanatomy of speech processing has been difficult to characterize. A major impediment to progress may have been the failure to consider task effects when mapping speech-related processing systems. We outline a dual-stream model of speech processing that remedies this situation. In this model, a ventral stream processes speech signals for comprehension, and a dorsal stream maps acoustic speech signals to frontal lobe articulatory networks. The model assumes that the ventral stream is largely bilaterally organized--although there are important computational differences between the left- and right-hemisphere systems--and that the dorsal stream is strongly left-hemisphere dominant.

4,234 citations


Cites background from "BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common T..."

  • ...So, there must be a neural mechanism that both codes and maintains instances of speech sounds, and can use these sensory traces to guide the tuning of speech gestures so that the sounds are accurately reproduce...

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Journal ArticleDOI
22 Nov 2002-Science
TL;DR: It is argued that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation and how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience is suggested.
Abstract: We argue that an understanding of the faculty of language requires substantial interdisciplinary cooperation. We suggest how current developments in linguistics can be profitably wedded to work in evolutionary biology, anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience. We submit that a distinction should be made between the faculty of language in the broad sense (FLB)and in the narrow sense (FLN) . FLB includes a sensory-motor system, a conceptual-intentional system, and the computational mechanisms for recursion, providing the capacity to generate an infinite range of expressions from a finite set of elements. We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations).

3,293 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This review aims to comprehensively cover the field of "sleep and memory" research by providing a historical perspective on concepts and a discussion of more recent key findings.
Abstract: Over more than a century of research has established the fact that sleep benefits the retention of memory. In this review we aim to comprehensively cover the field of "sleep and memory" research by providing a historical perspective on concepts and a discussion of more recent key findings. Whereas initial theories posed a passive role for sleep enhancing memories by protecting them from interfering stimuli, current theories highlight an active role for sleep in which memories undergo a process of system consolidation during sleep. Whereas older research concentrated on the role of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, recent work has revealed the importance of slow-wave sleep (SWS) for memory consolidation and also enlightened some of the underlying electrophysiological, neurochemical, and genetic mechanisms, as well as developmental aspects in these processes. Specifically, newer findings characterize sleep as a brain state optimizing memory consolidation, in opposition to the waking brain being optimized for encoding of memories. Consolidation originates from reactivation of recently encoded neuronal memory representations, which occur during SWS and transform respective representations for integration into long-term memory. Ensuing REM sleep may stabilize transformed memories. While elaborated with respect to hippocampus-dependent memories, the concept of an active redistribution of memory representations from networks serving as temporary store into long-term stores might hold also for non-hippocampus-dependent memory, and even for nonneuronal, i.e., immunological memories, giving rise to the idea that the offline consolidation of memory during sleep represents a principle of long-term memory formation established in quite different physiological systems.

1,964 citations


Cites background from "BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common T..."

  • ...Song learning in birds has been mainly studied in zebra finch males which develop their song between day 30 (after hatching), when they start producing unstructured sounds, and day 90, when they exhibit a well-developed song to be used as a complex social signal (321)....

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  • ...It bears great similarity with speech learning in human infants (321, 774)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown how damage to different components of this framework can account for the major symptom clusters of the fluent aphasias, and some recent evidence concerning how sentence-level processing might be integrated into the framework is discussed.

1,878 citations


Cites background from "BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common T..."

  • ...Does the concept of a sensory – motor integration network make sense in the context of speech? The answer is ‘yes’, such a network must exist ( Doupe & Kuhl, 1999 )....

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  • ...Therefore, there must be some mechanism for using auditory input to shape motor output ( Doupe & Kuhl, 1999 )....

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  • ...The answer is ‘yes’, such a network must exist (Doupe & Kuhl, 1999)....

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  • ...Therefore, there must be some mechanism for using auditory input to shape motor output (Doupe & Kuhl, 1999)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words.
Abstract: Infants learn language with remarkable speed, but how they do it remains a mystery. New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words. Social interaction with another human being affects speech learning in a way that resembles communicative learning in songbirds. The brain's commitment to the statistical and prosodic patterns that are experienced early in life might help to explain the long-standing puzzle of why infants are better language learners than adults. Successful learning by infants, as well as constraints on that learning, are changing theories of language acquisition.

1,818 citations


Cites result from "BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common T..."

  • ...These findings are reminiscent of the constraints observed in communication learning in songbird...

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Dec 1976-Nature
TL;DR: The study reported here demonstrates a previously unrecognised influence of vision upon speech perception, on being shown a film of a young woman's talking head in which repeated utterances of the syllable [ba] had been dubbed on to lip movements for [ga].
Abstract: MOST verbal communication occurs in contexts where the listener can see the speaker as well as hear him. However, speech perception is normally regarded as a purely auditory process. The study reported here demonstrates a previously unrecognised influence of vision upon speech perception. It stems from an observation that, on being shown a film of a young woman's talking head, in which repeated utterances of the syllable [ba] had been dubbed on to lip movements for [ga], normal adults reported hearing [da]. With the reverse dubbing process, a majority reported hearing [bagba] or [gaba]. When these subjects listened to the soundtrack from the film, without visual input, or when they watched untreated film, they reported the syllables accurately as repetitions of [ba] or [ga]. Subsequent replications confirm the reliability of these findings; they have important implications for the understanding of speech perception.

5,506 citations

Book
15 Jan 1967
TL;DR: The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world as mentioned in this paper, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than env...
Abstract: The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than env...

5,178 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
13 Dec 1996-Science
TL;DR: The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based solely on the statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds.
Abstract: Learners rely on a combination of experience-independent and experience-dependent mechanisms to extract information from the environment. Language acquisition involves both types of mechanisms, but most theorists emphasize the relative importance of experience-independent mechanisms. The present study shows that a fundamental task of language acquisition, segmentation of words from fluent speech, can be accomplished by 8-month-old infants based solely on the statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds. Moreover, this word segmentation was based on statistical learning from only 2 minutes of exposure, suggesting that infants have access to a powerful mechanism for the computation of statistical properties of the language input.

4,352 citations


"BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common T..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...By 9 months, they have learned the stress patterns of native-language words, and the rules for combining phonetic units (Jusczyk et al 1993), phrasal units (Jusczyk et al 1992), and the statistical probabilities of potential word candidates (Saffran et al 1996)....

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  • ...It is useful to define the basic terms used in each field, and the various ways in which vocal behavior is described, in order to assess what aspects of each of P1: PSA/MBG P2: PSA/ARY/MBG/VKS QC: PSA December 30, 1998 9:56 Annual Reviews AR076-21...

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Journal ArticleDOI

3,327 citations


"BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common T..." refers background or methods in this paper

  • ...Moreover, as with adults, infants show categorical perception of sounds, a phenomenon initially demonstrated in adults during the 1950s (Liberman et al 1967)....

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  • ...It has been clear for a long time that these two aspects of vocalization interact strongly, and in fact early speech theorists suggested that sound decoding requires creation of a model of the motor commands necessary to generate those sounds (Liberman et al 1967)....

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  • ...It is useful to define the basic terms used in each field, and the various ways in which vocal behavior is described, in order to assess what aspects of each of P1: PSA/MBG P2: PSA/ARY/MBG/VKS QC: PSA December 30, 1998 9:56 Annual Reviews AR076-21...

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  • ...Regardless of differences in component structures, for both birdsong and speech the production of highly structured and rapidly changing vocalizations requires elaborate neural control and coordination of respiration with a variety of vocal motor structures....

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Book
01 Jan 1980
TL;DR: Hornstein this article discusses the Biological Basis of Language Capacities and Language and Unconscious Knowledge Notes Index (LUCI) for language and unconscious knowledge in the context of natural language processing.
Abstract: Foreword by Norbert Hornstein Preface Part I 1 Mind and Body 2 Structures, Capacities, and Conventions 3 Knowledge of Grammar 4 Some Elements of Grammar Part II 5 On the Biological Basis of Language Capacities 6 Language and Unconscious Knowledge Notes Index

2,930 citations