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
Early life manipulations of vasopressin-family peptides alter vocal learning
TL;DR: Using zebra finches, it is shown that manipulations of nonapeptide hormones in the vasopressin family (arginine vasotocin, AVT) early in development can promote or disrupt both song and social motivation, providing the first evidence thatNonapeptides are critical to the development of vocal learning.
Journal ArticleDOI
Influence of visual experience on developmental shift from long‐term depression to long‐term potentiation in the rat medial vestibular nuclei
TL;DR: The results provide evidence that in a critical period of development visual input plays a crucial role in shaping synaptic plasticity of the vMVN, and suggest that the visual guided shift from LTD to LTP during development may be necessary to refine and consolidate vestibular circuitry.
Journal ArticleDOI
Hemispheric dominance underlying the neural substrate for learned vocalizations develops with experience
TL;DR: It is shown that in juvenile male and female zebra finches that had never heard an adult song before, neuronal activation after initial exposure to a conspecific song is bilateral, and like in humans, hemispheric dominance develops with vocal proficiency.
Journal ArticleDOI
Exposure to a novel stimulus environment alters patterns of lateralization in avian auditory cortex
L.M. Yang,D.S. Vicario +1 more
TL;DR: The results show that brief passive exposure to a novel category of sounds was sufficient to induce a gradual reorganization of the left and right secondary auditory cortices, which may reflect modification of perceptual filters to form a more efficient representation of auditory space.
Journal ArticleDOI
Symbols and mental programs: a hypothesis about human singularity
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors argue that humans possess multiple internal languages of thought, akin to computer languages, which encode and compress structures in various domains (mathematics, music, shape, etc.).
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