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
Origin of symbol-using systems: speech, but not sign, without the semantic urge
TL;DR: This work critically distinguish the origin of a system capable of evolution from the subsequent evolution that system becomes capable of, and examines the case of sign languages, which now operates in a world mostly decoupled from Darwinian evolutionary constraints.
Journal ArticleDOI
Contingent parental responses are naturally associated with zebra finch song learning
TL;DR: The data suggest that parental vocal and gestural feedback plays a reinforcing role for song learning in zebra finches, and suggest that these species should be closely examined for adult sensitivity to immature vocalizations and developmental capacity to learn from social feedback.
Journal ArticleDOI
Active recognition enhances the representation of behaviorally relevant information in single auditory forebrain neurons
TL;DR: A novel technique is presented that combines in vivo electrophysiological recording from awake, freely moving songbirds with operant conditioning techniques that allow control over birds' recognition of conspecific song, a widespread natural behavior in songbirds.
Proceedings ArticleDOI
Wireless sensor network for habitat monitoring: A counting heuristic
TL;DR: An algorithm for automatic counting of singing birds in their habitat by using wireless sensors fitted with microphone which uses graph theory and audio inputs comparison and demonstrates its efficiency through experimentations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Love songs, bird brains and diffusion tensor imaging.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce and explore the song control system of songbirds as a natural model for brain plasticity and point out the added value of the songbird brain model for in vivo diffusion tensor techniques and its derivatives.
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