Evolutionary And Functional Neurobiology Of Birdsong - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Evolutionary And Functional Neurobiology Of Birdsong write by Jordan Matthew Moore. This book was released on 2010. Evolutionary And Functional Neurobiology Of Birdsong available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Birdsong is a complex, learned vocal communication signal that functions in reproduction. Many aspects of the neural mechanisms underlying this behavior remain unknown, with respect to both song production and perception. The work described here investigates these issues from different levels of analysis. Nearly every aspect of song is characterized by immense interspecific diversity. In particular, species range from those that learn a single syllable to others that produce hundreds or thousands, but neither the ultimate nor proximate causes for this variability have been identified. Chapter 2 uses comparative analyses across a wide phylogeny of songbirds to address these questions. Syllable repertoire size is positively and strongly correlated with the degree of convergence along the descending motor pathway, suggesting that the level of top-down control rather than motor circuit size per se is more closely associated with the complexity of behavioral output. Repertoire size is not related to the sizes of other brain regions, however. Chapter 3 describes general evolutionary patterns of functional neural circuits and tests predictions made by two models of brain evolution. Interestingly, support was found for both. Nuclei that develop late in ontogeny possess larger allometric slopes than those that develop early, which is consistent with a developmental conservation model in which a general stretching of neurogenetic schedules underlies increases in brain size. Functional circuits evolve in concert and do so independently of others, however, supporting a mosaic pattern. Finally, chapter 4 examines the function of the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM), a region of the auditory forebrain, in adult females. Numerous correlative studies suggest that NCM is important for song learning. Consistent with this, inactivation of NCM eliminates female preferences for familiar songs but has much more modest effects on their preferences for high quality songs. Together, these experiments are the first to relate evolutionary changes in behavioral capacities to those in its underlying circuit, to document the coordinated evolution of functional circuits, and to demonstrate a causative role for the auditory forebrain in song perception.
Birdsong, Speech, and Language
Birdsong, Speech, and Language - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Birdsong, Speech, and Language write by Johan J. Bolhuis. This book was released on 2013. Birdsong, Speech, and Language available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase ("babbling"), the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language.
The Neuroethology of Birdsong
The Neuroethology of Birdsong - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Neuroethology of Birdsong write by Jon T. Sakata. This book was released on 2020-03-19. The Neuroethology of Birdsong available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Vocal signals are central for social communication across a wide range of vertebrate species; consequently, it is critical to understand the mechanisms underlying the learning, control, and evolution of vocal communication. Songbirds are at the forefront of research into such neural mechanisms. Indeed, songbirds provide a particularly important model system for this endeavor because of the many parallels between birdsong and human speech. Specifically, (1) songbirds are one of the few vertebrate species that, like humans, learn their vocal signals during development, (2) the processes of song learning and control in songbirds shares many parallels with the process of speech acquisition in humans, and (3) there exist deep homologies between the circuits for the learning, control, and processing of vocal signals across songbirds and humans. In addition, because of the diversity of songbirds and song learning strategies, songbirds offer a powerful model system to use the comparative method to reveal mechanisms underlying the evolution of song learning and production. Taken together, research on songbirds can not only reveal general principles underlying vertebrate vocal communication but can also provide insight into potential mechanisms underlying the learning, control, and processing of speech. This volume will cover a range of topics in birdsong spanning multiple level of analysis. Chapters will be authored by the world’s leading experts on birdsong and will provide comprehensive reviews of the processes underlying song learning, of the neural circuits for song learning and control as well as for the extraction and processing of song information, of the selection pressures underlying song evolution, and of genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the learning and evolution of song. The primary goals of this volume are to provide comprehensive, integrative, and comparative perspectives on birdsong and to underscore the importance of birdsong to biomedical research, evolutionary biology, and behavioral, systems, and computational neuroscience.The target audience of this volume will be graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and established academics and neuroscientists who are interested in mechanisms of communication from an integrative and comparative perspective. The volume is intended to function as a high-profile and contemporary reference on current work related to the learning, control, processing, and evolution of birdsong. This volume will have broad appeal to comparative and sensory biologists, neurophysiologists, and behavioral, systems, and cognitive neuroscientists who attend meetings such as the Society for Neuroscience, the International Society for Neuroethology, and the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. Because of the relevance of birdsong research to understanding human speech, it is likely that the volume will also be of interest to speech researchers and clinicians researching communication, motor, and sensory processing disorders.
Nature's Music
Nature's Music - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Nature's Music write by Peter R. Marler. This book was released on 2004-10-05. Nature's Music available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The voices of birds have always been a source of fascination. Nature’s Music brings together some of the world’s experts on birdsong, to review the advances that have taken place in our understanding of how and why birds sing, what their songs and calls mean, and how they have evolved. All contributors have strived to speak, not only to fellow experts, but also to the general reader. The result is a book of readable science, richly illustrated with recordings and pictures of the sounds of birds. Bird song is much more than just one behaviour of a single, particular group of organisms. It is a model for the study of a wide variety of animal behaviour systems, ecological, evolutionary and neurobiological. Bird song sits at the intersection of breeding, social and cognitive behaviour and ecology. As such interest in this book will extend far beyond the purely ornithological - to behavioural ecologists psychologists and neurobiologists of all kinds. * The scoop on local dialects in birdsong* How birdsongs are used for fighting and flirting* The writers are all international authorities on their subject
The Physics of Birdsong
The Physics of Birdsong - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Physics of Birdsong write by Gabriel B. Mindlin. This book was released on 2005-12-01. The Physics of Birdsong available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Detailed report on a topic that has already attracted much popular interest. Provides fascinating reading for physicists, biologists and general readers alike.
