What birdsong tells us about brain cells and learning

Date: February 19, 2020

Source: University of Chicago

Most scientists who study the brain believe that memories are stored through networks of synapses, or connections that form between neurons. Learning takes place as neurons form new connections and strengthen or weaken existing ones, giving the brain its so-called synaptic plasticity. There is growing evidence, however, that the intrinsic, built-in properties of the cells themselves, not just the connections between them, also play a role in this process.

New research by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago uses a unique model -- the intricate mating songs of birds -- to show how these intrinsic properties are closely tied to the complex processes of learning. The study, published in Nature Communications, could add a new layer of complexity to our understanding of the brain.

"We are able to go directly from the properties of the cells to the behavior of the animal," said Dan Margoliash, PhD, a neurobiologist and senior author of the new study. "This suggests that it's not just rapid changes at synapses that are driving learning and memory, but changes in the intrinsic properties of cells as well."

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Sam Lee: the Extinction Rebellion musician flying birdsong to the charts

Robin Denselow

He co-produced the RSPB birdsong recording that has hit the Top 20, and duets with nightingales – to highlight the beauty of a fragile world

Wed 15 May 2019 11.34 BSTLast modified on Fri 17 May 2019 16.48 BST

It’s just before midnight, deep in the Sussex countryside, and a small group led by the bravely inventive folk singer Sam Lee sets out to go singing with nightingales. We walk in silence in the dark – no torches are allowed – skirting a wood and then clambering up a bank on to a disused railway track. And here, in the bushes, a male nightingale is singing, blasting through the silence with a song that is astonishingly loud and exuberant, with a constantly changing, complex flurry of notes broken by periods of silence.

We sit and listen, then Sam picks up a shruti box – the instrument used by Indian musicians to create drone effects – and begins overtone singing, where two notes are produced at once. “They love the harmonics”, he explains. Instead of flying off, the bird now joins in, singing even louder than before. And he continues singing when tonight’s guest musician, the composer and arranger Kate St John begins improvising on cor anglais. And so it continues for well over an hour, with Sam switching to folk songs, including The Nightingale, of course, and Kate playing thumb piano. “The birds know how to create a dialogue,” Sam explains. “They love cellos and flutes and folk songs – but not guitars or singer-songwriters.”

This is the fourth year in which he has invited audiences to listen to nightingales and learn about their plight – “an 85% decline in 30-40 years, and only 5,500 pairs left in the whole of the UK. They could be gone in 20 or 30 years. It’s unbelievable”. But this spring the project has taken on a new significance, because the nightingale has become a symbol of resistance, thanks largely to Sam.

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The RSPB's new single is at No. 11...

Birdsong Hits The UK Charts

ROBIN MURRAY 

The RSPB's new single has hit the charts - and it's made entirely of bird song.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds released a single titled 'Let Nature Sing' last week, hoping to raise awareness for endangered birds.

In all, the single features 25 different types of bird song, ranging from blackbirds to robins, woodpeckers to warblers.

Stormzy and Taylor Swift are currently fighting it out for number one spot, with 'Let Nature Sing' hitting No. 11 on the midweeks.

Martin Harper, the RSPB’s director of conservation, said in a statement:

Over the last few days, thousands of people have bought and streamed our track to hear nature’s finest singers and show that they love bird song. This has started a national conversation as millions will have heard, seen and read the facts showing that, shockingly, nature is in crisis in the UK.

The response to 'Let Nature Sing' sends a powerful message that yes, nature is amazing but it is also in trouble. The good news is that it is not too late, we know what needs to be done and together we can take action to restore it for us and for future generations.

Listen and read more here

Birdsong loss would echo silence in the forests

9 March 2018

South-East Queensland is in danger of losing one of the last remaining populations of the Eastern bristlebird, one of Australia’s most melodic songbirds, a study has shown.

University of Queensland researchers working to save the critically endangered species said the isolated northern-most population had declined to fewer than 40 birds.

UQ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences PhD researcher Zoe Stone said most people were unaware the small brown birds were close to extinction.

“Only three Eastern bristlebird populations remain in eastern Australia, and the smallest by far is in the forests along the Border Ranges of south-east Queensland and adjacent northern New South Wales,” Ms Stone said.

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Mimicking birdsongs

Researchers develop simple device to recreate complex birdsongs

Date: August 28, 2017

Source: Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Summary:

A simple device has been developed that mimics complex birdsongs. The device uses air blown through a stretched rubber tube to recreate birdsongs found in nature, including the songs of zebra and Bengalese finches.

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Lost British birdsong discovered in New Zealand birds

Recordings of New Zealand yellowhammer accents enable scientists to hear how their British relatives might have sounded 150 years ago

Georgia Brown

Thursday 12 January 2017 13.26 GMT Last modified on Thursday 12 January 2017 15.41 GMT
 

A new study reveals that a type of native birdsong, now lost in Britain, can still be heard in New Zealand where the birds were introduced in the 19th century.

By comparing recordings of yellowhammer accents in both countries scientists were able to hear how the birds’ song might have sounded in the UK 150 years ago.

The study, published in Ecography, examined yellowhammer accents in the UK and New Zealand, where over 600 of the birds were introduced in the 1860’s and 70’s and later became pests. It found some dialects that likely existed in the UK appear to have gone extinct, yet they still exist in New Zealand – a phenomenon that also occurs in human languages.

The researchers say the decline in birdsong is likely to be linked to falling yellowhammer populations in the UK.

The research was led by a Czech team, who encouraged volunteers to collect and submit recordings of singing yellowhammers using smartphones and cameras. Using these citizen science project recordings, the scientists compared the patterns of yellowhammer dialects in the native range of Great Britain, and in the invaded range of New Zealand.

The New Zealand birds had almost twice as many dialects as their British relatives, overturning the scientists’ expectations that the range of dialects would be greater in the mother country.

Lead author Pavel Pipek, of the Charles University in Prague, said: “It was fascinating to have this unique opportunity to study yellowhammer dialects from native and introduced populations and how they have evolved over 150 years.



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Genes tell story of birdsong and human speech

Date:

December 11, 2014

Source:

Duke University

Summary:

A massive international effort to sequence and compare the entire genomes of 48 species of birds, representing every major order of the bird family tree, reveals that vocal learning evolved twice or maybe three times among songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds. Even more striking, the set of genes employed in each of those song innovations is remarkably similar to the genes involved in human speaking ability.

Read more ...

Hermit thrush uses elements of human music to create bird song

If the bird outside your window sounds like it's singing a familiar tune, it might not be your imagination. The songs of some birds really do contain musical notes and intervals similar to those found in human music, a new study has found.

Canadian-American composer and music professor Emily Doolittle, working with Austrian and German biologists, discovered intriguing patterns in the song of a common North American songbird called a hermit thrush.

"The hermit thrush is clearly using some of the same ingredients to build its song… that humans use in creating their music," Doolittle told CBC's Quirks & Quarks in an interview that airs Saturday.

Doolittle, who is originally from Nova Scotia, is now a professor of composition in the Department of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Wash.

She said she first became interested in birdsong while she was a visiting student in Amsterdam, and heard a European blackbird singing outside her window one night.

"I was really fascinated by the way short bits of what it's saying sounded a lot like human music," she recalled. She thought she could hear scales and arpeggios.

Like most songbirds, hermit thrushes sing to attract mates and proclaim and defend their territories, and it's mostly the males who sing.

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Birdsongs automatically decoded by computer scientists

Date:

July 17, 2014

Source:

Queen Mary, University of London

Summary:

Scientists have found a successful way of identifying bird sounds from large audio collections, which could be useful for expert and amateur bird-watchers alike.

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Birdsong is not all about sexual selection: Female birds sing much more often than previously thought

Date:

March 5, 2014

Source:

Leiden, Universiteit

Summary:

In 71 percent of all songbird species with available data, the female sings, too. This is remarkable because in the wake of Darwin’s theory of evolution, birdsong has generally been seen as a characteristic of male birds, allowing them to compete with other males and attract females. The exciting question now is how females apparently repeatedly lost their song in the course of evolution. Why did they stop singing in some lineages, but not in others?

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BBC criticised over rare migrant birds featured in 'Tweet of the Day'

Radio 4 listeners have woken to the melodious sound of birdsong since the station began its early morning Tweet of the Day slot earlier this year to educate the nation about the calls of British species.

However, some wildlife lovers have been left annoyed that the producers have chosen to include rare migrant birds that only stop in the UK for a few weeks of the year.

One frustrated listener, Steve Norris, wrote to Radio Times: “Since July, we’ve been subjected to more and more ‘passage migrants’ that most of us are totally unfamiliar with.

“I don’t class these birds as British, so why are we listening to them?”

The BBC has included some rare species because its selection is based on the official list of nearly 600 British birds compiled by the British Ornithologists Union (BOU), whose qualification for entry is that a bird must have landed on UK soil once.

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Contaminants May Cause Birds to Sing a Different Tune

Sep. 18, 2013 — In an article published today in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers at Cornell University's Laboratory of Ornithology report that in some environments, songbirds exhibit inconsistency in their songs which may be caused by non-lethal levels of contaminants that persist in the sediments of the Hudson River region.

The research reported in "The Effect of Polychlorinated Biphenyls on the Song of Two Passerine Species," was funded by New York Sea Grant, a joint program of the State University of New York, Cornell University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Lead author Dr. Sara DeLeon, working with principal investigator Dr. Timothy J. DeVoogd and co-investigator Dr. Andre A. Dhondt, studied songbirds that nest along the Hudson River valley, a region with legacy levels of PCBs as a result of decades of electronics manufacturing upriver. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are synthetic chemical pollutants with demonstrated detrimental toxic and developmental effects on humans and wildlife.

"Dr. DeLeon's work would have brought a smile to the face of Rachel Carson," said William Wise, Interim Director of New York Sea Grant. "This type of dedicated field research can tease out the impact of organic contaminants in the environment on creatures that are known to all of us. Sara and colleagues are drawing the connections between contaminant, animal behavior and, ultimately, a population's health."

Songbirds feed their young PCB-contaminated aquatic insects as their main food source. Some birds continue eating insects throughout life, thus increasing PCB ingestion if they live in contaminated areas. The research team non-lethally investigated total PCB loads, congener specific PCB profiles, and songs of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) and song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) along a historical PCB gradient at the Hudson River in New York State.

Key among the team's findings is that song disruption is tied to specific types of PCBs -- there are 209 variations, differentiated by the positioning and number of chlorine atoms. DeLeon tested 41 of these variations to isolate their effects.

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Birdsong can change surprisingly quickly after relocation

Lost in translocation? How bird song could help save species

May 2013. Translocation - or moving animals to safer places - is a vital tool for saving species from extinction. Many factors influence the success of these new populations, including habitat quality, predators, capture and release techniques, the number and sex of individuals, and their genetic diversity. Now new research, the first of its kind, published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology suggests bird song could also be important.

Ecologists from the University of Waikato and Lincoln University in New Zealand studied the North Island kōkako, an iconic bird with a haunting, organ-like song. Once widespread in the North Island, loss of habitat by deforestation and predation by rats, possums and stoats decimated the population. By 1999, fewer than 400 pairs remained, and between 2001 and 2007, several pairs were moved from Te Urewera National Park to two other reserves: Boundary Stream Mainland Island and Ngapukeriki.

Songs analysed

To find out how moving the kōkako has affected their song, the researchers made hundreds of recordings in the three populations and analysed differences in song using sonograms. They then used playback experiments to discover how birds from one population reacted to another populations' song.

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Tweet of the Day: David Attenborough to present BBC Radio 4 birdsong series

Naturalist will join other presenters for new weekday 90-second show at 5.58am highlighting songs of 265 UK birds

Sir David Attenborough will attempt to reclaim tweeting for the birds in a year-long Radio 4 series, Tweet of the Day, featuring the songs of 265 birds around Britain. 

Like the dawn chorus, each 90-second episode will air at the beginning of the day, just before the Today programme, starting with the cuckoo in the first programme on 6 May. 

Along with the birdsong, the series will tell the story of the bird through science, social history, culture, literature and music. 

Along with species with which listeners may already be familiar, such as the blackbird, nightingale and swift, it will also feature lesser-known species such as the storm petrel, a sea bird that frequents rocky beaches and has a song described by one ornithologist as "like a fairy being sick". 

There will also be birds spotted only by the most devoted of twitchers such as the black-browed albatross, a Falklands resident that once turned up on the northern tip of Shetland. 

Attenborough, who will present the first month's worth of programmes with other presenters to include Springwatch's Chris Packham, said: "I'm delighted to be involved in this series. 

"I've seen some of the most incredible animals on my travels around the world, but Tweet of the Day is a nice reminder of the teeming world of birds on my doorstep. As a non-ornithologist, I might even learn a little too." 

The series, which is being made by the BBC's natural history unit, will air every weekday at 5.58am on Radio 4. Many of the songs will come from the BBC's archive, along with new recordings, including the "barks" made by great crested grebes as part of their mating ritual. 

Continued: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/apr/24/tweet-david-attenborough-bbc-radio-birdsong

Birdsong Study Pecks Theory That Music Is Uniquely Human

Dec. 27, 2012 — A bird listening to birdsong may experience some of the same emotions as a human listening to music, suggests a new study on white-throated sparrows, published in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience.

"We found that the same neural reward system is activated in female birds in the breeding state that are listening to male birdsong, and in people listening to music that they like," says Sarah Earp, who led the research as an undergraduate at Emory University.

For male birds listening to another male's song, it was a different story: They had an amygdala response that looks similar to that of people when they hear discordant, unpleasant music.

The study, co-authored by Emory neuroscientist Donna Maney, is the first to compare neural responses of listeners in the long-standing debate over whether birdsong is music.

"Scientists since the time of Darwin have wondered whether birdsong and music may serve similar purposes, or have the same evolutionary precursors," Earp notes. "But most attempts to compare the two have focused on the qualities of the sound themselves, such as melody and rhythm."

Read more:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121227080110.htm

Birdsong Bluster May Dupe Strange Females, but It Won't Fool Partners

Dec. 18, 2012 — Male birds use their song to dupe females they have just met by pretending they are in excellent physical condition.

Just as some men try to cast themselves in a better light when they approach would-be dates, so male birds in poor condition seek to portray that they are fitter than they really are. But males do not even try to deceive their long-term partners, who are able to establish the true condition of the male by their song.

Researchers at the University of Exeter studied zebra finches to establish how trustworthy birdsong was in providing honest signals about the male's value as a mate. Singing is a test of the condition of birds because it uses a lot of energy. Fit and healthy birds are thought to be able to sustain a high song rate for longer, making them more attractive to females.

The research team, which included scientists from the Université de Bourgogne in France, looked at short and longer encounters with unknown females, as well as patterns of song around females who were familiar to them.

The team discovered that males in poor condition could "cheat" and vary their song to give a false impression to stranger females. But they did not even try to fool those who knew them, who used song as a reliable test of their underlying qualities. The research is published on December 19 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B

Read on:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121218203511.htm