Journal ArticleDOI
BIRDSONG AND HUMAN SPEECH: Common Themes and Mechanisms
TLDR
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.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Temperature Manipulation in Songbird Brain Implicates the Premotor Nucleus HVC in Birdsong Syntax.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated where the song syntax is encoded in the brain of the Bengalese finch by rapidly and reversibly manipulating the temperature in the song production pathway and found that cooling the premotor nucleus HVC (proper name) slows down the song tempo, consistent with the idea that HVC controls moment-to-moment timings of acoustic features in the syllables.
Journal ArticleDOI
It's About Time: How Input Timing Is Used and Not Used To Create Emergent Properties in the Auditory System
TL;DR: It is concluded that “timing” is more than latency differences between excitation and inhibition, and response selectivity depends on a complex interaction between the timing, the shapes, and magnitudes of the excitatory and inhibitory conductances and spike threshold.
Journal ArticleDOI
Altered brain activity for phonological manipulation in dyslexic Japanese children.
Yosuke Kita,Hisako Yamamoto,Kentaro Oba,Yuri Terasawa,Yoshiya Moriguchi,Hitoshi Uchiyama,Ayumi Seki,Tatsuya Koeda,Masumi Inagaki +8 more
TL;DR: The present study investigated brain activity that underlies deficits in phonological awareness in Japanese dyslexic children using functional magnetic resonance imaging and found altered activity in two brain regions that shares similarity with those of dyslexics children in countries speaking alphabetical languages.
Journal ArticleDOI
Genetic components of vocal learning.
TL;DR: It is concluded that FoxP2 is important for the building and function of brain pathways including, but not limited to, those essential for learned vocal communication.
Decoding the song of the pied butcherbird: an initial survey
TL;DR: It is concluded that their elaborate song culture seems to overreach biological necessity, indicating an aesthetic appreciation of sound is present in the pied butcherbird.
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Journal ArticleDOI
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