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
A network for audio–motor coordination in skilled pianists and non-musicians
TL;DR: The data imply an intermodal transformation network of auditory and motor areas which is subject to a certain degree of plasticity by means of intensive training.
Journal ArticleDOI
A hypothesis for basal ganglia-dependent reinforcement learning in the songbird.
Michale S. Fee,Jesse H. Goldberg +1 more
TL;DR: This work outlines a specific working hypothesis for how BG-forebrain circuits could utilize an internally computed reinforcement signal to direct song learning, and includes a number of general concepts borrowed from the mammalian BG literature, including a dopaminergic reward prediction error and dopamine-mediated plasticity at corticostriatal synapses.
Journal ArticleDOI
Critical period regulation across multiple timescales.
Rebecca K. Reh,Brian G. Dias,Brian G. Dias,Charles A. Nelson,Daniela Kaufer,Janet F. Werker,Bryan Kolb,Joel D. Levine,Takao K. Hensch,Takao K. Hensch +9 more
TL;DR: Here, recent progress in the biological basis of critical periods is considered as a unifying rubric for understanding plasticity across multiple timescales and the maturation of parvalbumin-positive inhibitory neurons is pivotal.
Journal ArticleDOI
Translating Birdsong: Songbirds as a Model for Basic and Applied Medical Research
TL;DR: Behavioral and mechanistic parallels between birdsong and aspects of speech and social communication are highlighted, including insights into mirror neurons, the function of auditory feedback, and genes underlying social communication disorders.
Journal ArticleDOI
Functional identification of sensory mechanisms required for developmental song learning
Sarah E. London,David F. Clayton +1 more
TL;DR: The hypothesis that molecular signaling in a sensory brain area outside of the song system is required for developmental song learning is tested and transiently suppressed the extracellular signal–regulated kinase signaling pathway in a portion of the auditory forebrain specifically during tutor song exposure is tested.
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