    |
Images of song perception: How early auditory experience shapes auditory fMRI responses in songbirds
  
|
Juvenile male zebra finches develop their song by imitation. Females do not sing but are attracted to males’ songs. With functional magnetic resonance imaging and event-related potentials we tested how early auditory experience shapes responses in the auditory forebrain of the adult bird.
Adult male birds kept in isolation over the sensitive period for song learning showed no consistency in auditory responses to conspecific songs, calls, and syllables. Thirty seconds of song playback each day over development, which is sufficient to induce song imitation, was also sufficient to shape stimulus-specific responses.
Strikingly, adult females kept in isolation over development showed responses similar to those of males that were exposed to songs. We suggest that early auditory experience with songs may be required to tune perception toward conspecific songs in males, whereas in females song selectivity develops even without prior exposure to song.
|
|
|
|
Culture in the lab: development of song culture in the zebra finch
Zebra finch raised in isolation develop abnormal songs. We designed an experiment to determine whether wild-type song culture might emerge over multiple generations in an isolated colony founded by isolates. In tutoring lineages starting from isolate founders, we quantified alterations in song across tutoring generations.
We found that juveniles imitated the isolate tutors but changed certain characteristics of the songs. These alterations accumulated over learning generations. Consequently, songs evolved towards the wild-type in three to four generations. Thus, species-typical song culture can appear de novo.
|
|
 
How a song is born
Zebra finches learn their song during two months of development (days 30-90 post hatch). Over that time, they listen to adult birds (tutors) and produce 1-2 million song syllables.
We record ALL of them. The images below show the distribution of song syllables during early and late song development. Each dot represents one syllable, presenting the duration of that syllable versus its frequency modulation:
How sleep affects song learning
As mentioned above, zebra finches sing about 1-2 million syllables over song development, or to be accurate, during the days of song development. What do they do over night? Sleep, of course.
But sleep is an active process, and it appears that vocal changes occur during sleep. Those changes are stronger, and qualitatively different than changes that occur during daytime singing.
 
 
Watch the World Science Festival presentation about our research (mostly in part 3)
Watch the PBS "The Music Instinct" documentary about our research
This website and its content is copyright of The City University of New York. All rights reserved.
People Research Sound Analysis Publications Links
|
|
