Genes in songbirds hold clues about human speech disorders

Date:  March 28, 2018

Source:  University of California - Los Angeles

Summary:

Insights into how songbirds learn to sing provide promising clues about human speech disorders and may lead to new ways of treating them, according to new research published in the journal eLife.

There are about 9,000 species of birds, about half of which are songbirds. When these birds sing, the activity of a master gene called FoxP2 declines in a key region of the brain involved in vocal control known as Area X. The decrease in FoxP2 produces changes in the activity of thousands of other genes.

FoxP2 also plays an important role in speech in humans. Stephanie White, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology and senior author of the study, thinks FoxP2 and the changes it causes could be a part of the molecular basis for vocal learning. In both humans and birds, cells process this gene in a way that produces both a full-length protein and a shorter version of the protein. The long version regulates other genes; what the short version does remains a mystery. Humans with a mutation in the long version have problems with their speech.

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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.

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Did human speech evolve from bird song?

Thursday, June 12, 2014 - 3:30pm

If you examine the human language closely, it resembles the speech forms of two other animals on the planet: birds and nonhuman primates. Now, linguists and biologists are speculating that our speech evolved with the help of chirping birds, or bird song, and some of the alarm calls of monkeys, Nature World News reports. Their hypothesis, described this week in Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that while listening to birds led to the melodic part of our language, listening to other primate communication helped us learn how to add complex meaning and content.

Source: Frontiers in Psychology

http://news.sciencemag.org/sifter/2014/06/did-human-speech-evolve-from-bird-song

Roots of Language in Human and Bird Biology: Genes Activated for Human Speech Similar to Ones Used by Singing Songbirds

Feb. 14, 2013 — The genes activated for human speech are similar to the ones used by singing songbirds, new experiments suggest.

These results, which are not yet published, show that gene products produced for speech in the cortical and basal ganglia regions of the human brain correspond to similar molecules in the vocal communication areas of the brains of zebra finches and budgerigars. But these molecules aren't found in the brains of doves and quails -- vocal birds that do not learn their sounds.

Zebra finch (Wikipedia)

"The results suggest that similar behavior and neural connectivity for a convergent complex trait like speech and song are associated with many similar genetic changes," said Duke neurobiologist Erich Jarvis, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Jarvis studies the molecular pathways that songbirds use while learning to sing. In past experiments, he and his collaborators found that songbirds have a connection between the front part of their brain and nerves in the brainstem that control movement in muscles that make songs in birds. They've seen this circuit in a more primitive form related to ultrasonic mating calls in mice. Humans also have this motor learning pathway for speech.

Continued:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130214111604.htm