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
Primitive Auditory Stream Segregation: A Neurophysiological Study in the Songbird Forebrain
Mark A. Bee,Georg M. Klump +1 more
TL;DR: The results are consistent with the hypothesis that preattentive auditory processes, such as frequency selectivity and forward masking contribute to the perceptual segregation of sequential acoustic events having different frequencies into separate auditory streams, but also suggest that additional processes may be required to account for all known perceptual effects related to sequential auditory stream segregation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Cross Fostering Experiments Suggest That Mice Songs Are Innate
TL;DR: The usefulness of mouse “song” as a model of mammalian vocal learning is limited, but mouse song has the potential to be an indispensable model to study genetic mechanisms for vocal patterning and behavioral sequences.
Journal ArticleDOI
Incremental training increases the plasticity of the auditory space map in adult barn owls
TL;DR: It is shown that when the prismatic shift is experienced in small increments, maps of ITD in adults do change adaptively and once established through incremental training, new ITD maps can be reacquired with a single large Prismatic shift.
Journal ArticleDOI
The impact of early identification of permanent childhood hearing impairment on speech and language outcomes
TL;DR: The research supports the conclusion that, in children with PCHi, newborn hearing screening and early identification lead to beneficial effects on language development, with the most consistent evidence provided for links between early identification of PCHI and positive language outcomes.
Journal ArticleDOI
Motor Sequences and the Basal Ganglia: Kinematics, Not Habits
Michel Desmurget,Robert Turner +1 more
TL;DR: The results suggest that the BG motor circuit contributes to motor execution, but not to motor sequencing or the storage of overlearned serial skills.
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