sing

Learning new songs

dr. dolittle — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:39:02 +0000

Learning new songs

New research shows that premotor neurons are activated in the brains of adolescent male zebra finches whenever a young bird hears their father (a tutor) sing. These are the same neurons that are usually activated in anticipation of movement. What is special about this, is that as the birds learned new songs or pieces of new songs, activation of these neurons declined. This effect was due to inhibitory interneurons whose firing frequency increased as the birds practiced and improved their accuracy. Activation of these inhibitory interneurons prevented any further changes to the circuitry once a song, or pieces of a song, was learned. In a quote from the New York Times, study author Dr. Michael Long (New York University, Langone) said, “These inhibitory cells are really smart — once you’ve gotten a part of the song down, the area gets locked." Although the neurons ignore the father once the birds reach sexual maturity, unlike human adolescents the birds remember everything he had to say.

Dr. Long also stated in a quote from Science Daily, "While we have known for decades that adolescent songbirds only learn their songs if exposed to a tutor, we believe our study is the first to detail changes in nerve networks that make this mastery possible in maturing brains."

Here is a video from the NY Times showing an adolescent male learning to sing from a "tutor":

Sources:

D. Vallentin, G. Kosche, D. Lipkind, M. A. Long. Inhibition protects acquired song segments during vocal learning in zebra finches. Science, 2016; 351 (6270): 267 DOI: 10.1126/science.aad3023

Science Daily

Video from: New York Times

dr. dolittle Tue, 01/19/2016 - 19:39

How to attract a female

dr. dolittle — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 12:26:18 +0000

How to attract a female

A female mouse that is. You may recall a post from several years ago when we talked about how rats seem to "laugh" when tickled. Back in April 2015 researchers at Duke University presented a video that showed male mice "singing" a tune after either smelling the urine of a female mouse or being in her presence. The sounds were recorded using a microphone designed to capture 35 to 125 kilohertz (kz), which is a much higher frequency than we can hear:

Recent research published in eLife shows that female mice will sing back if interested in the male pursuing her. You can listen to a clip of a female's response here. They discovered this after being able to isolate each singer's voice in a group. Thus it is possible that prior recordings may have been of females as opposed to males.

Judging from the video above, it may not have been his lucky day as it does not appear she reciprocated his song...

Sources:

Neunuebel JP, Taylor AL, Arthur BJ, Egnor SER. Female mice ultrasonically interact with males during courtship displays. eLife. 4: e06203, 2015. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06203

Science Magazine

Video from Duke University via YouTube

dr. dolittle Thu, 09/17/2015 - 08:26

Tags

Isn't "lady" sexist/politically-incorrect?

I apologize if I have offended anyone. It was certainly not my intention. I have replaced the word "lady".

Actually, it can be complimentary, unless someone is not the opposite of a gentlemen. In professional or academic or science writing it is common practice to neutralize gender bias in language. Here male and female suffices. To do otherwise may suggest a behavior is appropriate or inappropriate. Only a mouse would know what is un-mouse-lady-like or not. So we neutralize so as not to assume or presume. In science we observe and describe, avoiding the projection of personified roles, ergo human sex role bias. Nicely peer-reviewed and corrected. If it was a story or even a study comparing mouse behavior to human, it could be useful and acceptable to have little lady and gentlemen mice...

Happy Holidays!

dr. dolittle — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:18:23 +0000

Happy Holidays!

This was too cute not to share. Here is a video of animals in Blank Park Zoo in Iowa performing their version of a Christmas carol.

dr. dolittle Mon, 12/23/2013 - 08:18