Welcome to The CCNY Laboratory of Animal Behavior
Images of song perception: How early auditory experience shapes auditory fMRI and ERP 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 forsong 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.
Co-authors: Kristen Maul, Henning Voss, Santosh Helekar, Lucas Parra
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.
Click here to download our Nature article about development of song culture
Click here to read Olga Feher's PhD dissertation about song culture
Click here to download examples of song-culture development
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 affect 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.
Click here to download our Nature article about how sleep affects song learning
Watch the NOVA Science Now episode about our research
Watch the World Science Festival presentation about our research (mostly in part 3)
Watch the BBC Horizon documentary about how birdsong and speech evolution might be linked
Watch the PBS "The Music Instinct" documentary about our research
