Birdsong as a window into language origins and evolutionary neuroscience
| Autor: | Caitlin M. Aamodt, Madza Farias-Virgens, Stephanie A. White |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
neoteny
0301 basic medicine speech Biology Medical and Health Sciences General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Songbirds 03 medical and health sciences 0302 clinical medicine Convergent evolution otorhinolaryngologic diseases medicine Animals Humans Speech Animal communication Sexual Maturation Zebra finch Language Neurons Evolutionary Biology evolutionary neuroscience Bengalese finch zebra finch Neurosciences Brain Correction Evolutionary neuroscience Human brain Biological Sciences biology.organism_classification Biological Evolution songbird Songbird 030104 developmental biology medicine.anatomical_structure nervous system Trait Vocal learning Vocalization Animal General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Neuroscience 030217 neurology & neurosurgery |
| Zdroj: | Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, vol 375, iss 1789 |
| ISSN: | 1471-2970 0962-8436 |
| Popis: | Humans and songbirds share the key trait of vocal learning, manifested in speech and song, respectively. Striking analogies between these behaviours include that both are acquired during developmental critical periods when the brain's ability for vocal learning peaks. Both behaviours show similarities in the overall architecture of their underlying brain areas, characterized by cortico-striato-thalamic loops and direct projections from cortical neurons onto brainstem motor neurons that control the vocal organs. These neural analogies extend to the molecular level, with certain song control regions sharing convergent transcriptional profiles with speech-related regions in the human brain. This evolutionary convergence offers an unprecedented opportunity to decipher the shared neurogenetic underpinnings of vocal learning. A key strength of the songbird model is that it allows for the delineation of activity-dependent transcriptional changes in the brain that are driven by learned vocal behaviour. To capitalize on this advantage, we used previously published datasets from our laboratory that correlate gene co-expression networks to features of learned vocalization within and after critical period closure to probe the functional relevance of genes implicated in language. We interrogate specific genes and cellular processes through converging lines of evidence: human-specific evolutionary changes, intelligence-related phenotypes and relevance to vocal learning gene co-expression in songbirds. This article is part of the theme issue ‘What can animal communication teach us about human language?’ |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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