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
Autism: a "critical period" disorder?
TL;DR: It is proposed that alteration of the expression and/or timing of critical period circuit refinement in primary sensory brain areas may significantly contribute to autistic phenotypes, including cognitive and behavioral impairments.
Journal ArticleDOI
Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical period.
TL;DR: The findings suggest that the potential for acquiring absolute pitch may be universal, and may be realized by enabling infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for acquisition of features of their native language.
Journal ArticleDOI
Marmosets: A Neuroscientific Model of Human Social Behavior
Cory T. Miller,Winrich A. Freiwald,David A. Leopold,Jude F. Mitchell,Afonso C. Silva,Xiaoqin Wang +5 more
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that emerging behavioral paradigms are well suited to isolate components of marmoset cognition that are highly relevant to humans and is anticipated that through parallel technical and paradigmatic advances, marmosets will become an essential model of human social behavior, including its dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Journal ArticleDOI
Early auditory experience generates long-lasting memories that may subserve vocal learning in songbirds
TL;DR: It is shown that neurons in a forebrain auditory area of adult male zebra finches are selectively tuned to the song of a tutor heard early in development, suggesting that this auditory memory may have served as the model for song learning.
Journal ArticleDOI
Different Subthreshold Mechanisms Underlie Song Selectivity in Identified HVc Neurons of the Zebra Finch
TL;DR: In vivo intracellular recordings from morphologically and electrophysiologically identified HVc neurons revealed that both relay cell types fire song-selectively, however, their firing arises via markedly different subthreshold processes, and only X-projecting neurons appear to be sites for auditory refinement.
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