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
Why Are No Animal Communication Systems Simple Languages
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the key design features that are often used to evaluate language-like properties of natural animal communication systems and conclude that although bird song communication is nuanced and complex, and has the acoustic potential for productivity, it is not productive - it cannot be used to say many different things.
Book ChapterDOI
Chapter 2 – The Conservative Evolution of the Vertebrate Basal Ganglia
TL;DR: The chapter reviews that BG evolution in vertebrates reveals that both the striatum and pallidum are ancient structures, both likely present in the jawed fish ancestral to modern jawed vertebrates.
Journal ArticleDOI
Song characterization in the spectacled warbler (Sylvia conspicillata): a circum-Mediterranean species with a complex song structure
TL;DR: In this article, the authors characterized the species song structure on the island of Fuerteventura, quantifying repertoire size, inter-and intra-individual spectrographic variation, to determine whether acoustic variation occurred within an island population.
Journal ArticleDOI
Songbirds can learn flexible contextual control over syllable sequencing
TL;DR: In this article, Veit et al. trained adult male Bengalese finches to change the sequence of their songs in response to random colored lights that had no natural meaning to the birds.
Journal ArticleDOI
Is the Capacity for Vocal Learning in Vertebrates Rooted in Fish Schooling Behavior
Matz Larsson,Benjamin W. Abbott +1 more
TL;DR: How the capacity to entrain is manifest in fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals is discussed, predictions to test the acoustic advantages hypothesis are proposed, and aural costs and benefits played a key role in shaping a wide variety of traits, including social grouping, group movement, and respiratory-motor coupling.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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Journal ArticleDOI
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