As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Friday 9 December 2016

Researchers map neural circuitry of songbird learning


Date: December 8, 2016
Source: The City University of New York

How do juvenile songbirds learn to sing in a way that preserves both the unique features of local song culture and their specifics-specific song "signature"? Researchers have begun to map the brain circuitry responsible for cultural transmission and species specificity in birdsong.

Two studies appearing in the December 9 issue of Science shed light upon the neuronal architecture of birdsong. In one experiment, Dr. Vikram Gadagkar, postdoctoral fellow and neurobiologist at Cornell University, and his colleagues found that dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain encode errors in singing performance. This dopaminergic error signal may also help juvenile zebra finches learn to accurately imitate the song of their tutor.

In the second study, investigators studied songbird hatchlings fostered by another species. Dr. Makoto Araki, Neuronal Mechanism of Critical Period Unit, 2 3 Collective Interactions Unit at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Okinawa, Japan and colleagues determined that, while juvenile zebra finches imitated the song syllables of their adoptive Bengalese finch parents, they adjusted song cadence towards the rhythm typical of their own species, whose song they had never heard, suggesting that songbirds learn rhythm from an innate template rather than from other birds.



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