Date: December 12, 2016
Source: Okinawa Institute of
Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University
Like humans learning to speak,
juvenile birds learn to sing by mimicking vocalizations of adults of the same
species during development. Juvenile birds preferentially learn the song of
their own species, even in noisy environments with a variety of different birdsongs.
But how they can recognize their species' song has, until now, remained a
mystery. In a collaborative study, neuroscientists and a physicist at the
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have
uncovered an innate mechanism for species identification based on the silent
gaps between birdsong syllables.
"We co-designed an
experiment that works within the constraints of neuroscience while satisfying
the requirements of physics," says Professor Mahesh Bandi, head of the Collective
Interactions Unit at OIST.
Dr. Makoto Araki and Professor
Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama of OIST's Neuronal Mechanism for Critical Period Unit and
Professor Bandi performed a cross-fostering experiment in which juvenile zebra
finches were raised by Bengalese finch foster parents to examine how their
birdsong develops under the tutoring of a different species. Birdsong is
comprised of stereotypical repeats of a few syllables, called 'song motifs', in
which syllables are separated by silent gaps. The findings, published in
Science, reveal that the fostered zebra finches learned morphologies of
Bengalese finch syllables, including syllable duration, but transposed onto
zebra finch silent gap patterns. This suggests that temporal gaps between
syllables are innate, while syllable morphology can be learned.
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