Sentences with phrase «vocal learning»

The study offered the first glimpse of the process of vocal learning in dolphins.

These differing views caused confusion about the sizes of the brain regions important for vocal learning.

Before now, some scientists had assumed that the regions surrounding the cores had nothing to do with vocal learning.

The discovery is also interesting and useful because it can be paired with the knowledge about another interesting vocal mechanism shared by some birds and humans: The neural mechanisms underlying vocal learning.

Most of the bird's vocal learning brain regions are tucked into areas that also control movement.

But new evidence shows that birds can dance, revealing that the mysterious ability could be a by - product of vocal learning.

Observational evidences of vocal learning in southern elephant seals: a longitudinal study.

«Each (vocal learning center) has a core and a shell in the parrot, suggesting that the whole pathway has been duplicated.»

«Understanding the social systems of parrots is critical to understanding social processes, such as vocal learning and the spread of behaviors, and can also give us greater insight into how social and cognitive complexity evolved in other species,» explained lead author Elizabeth Hobson, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis.

Testing vocal learning ability in social mammals usually requires observing the animal in a novel social situation, one that might stimulate them to communicate in new ways.

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the types of sounds they made to more closely match their social partners.

Patel doesn't think it is a coincidence that Snowball belongs to a lineage of birds that excel at vocal learning.

Dolphin communication is suspected to be complex, on the basis of their call repertoires, cognitive abilities, and ability to modify signals through vocal learning.

By examining gene expression patterns, the new study found that parrot brains are structured differently than the brains of songbirds and hummingbirds, which also exhibit vocal learning.

In recent years, songbirds» similarities to human vocal learning have piqued researchers» interests in using them as a functional animal model to study the neurological basis for Huntington's disease.

Vocal learning skills alone don't necessarily mean that killer whales have language in the same way that humans do.

But while avian researchers have characterized vocal learning in songbirds down to specific neural pathways, studying the trait in large marine animals has presented more of a challenge.

«We identified networks of genes involved in critical - period vocal learning, including human speech - related genes,» White said.

Both songbirds and humans are not born with the ability to speak or sing, but must learn their language or song by listening to others, a process called vocal imitation learning or simply vocal learning.

Much of the data collection took place at Hunter's Laboratory of Vocal Learning whose principle investigator, Ofer Tchernichovski, is a senior author on the study.

«Network of neurons crucial for vocal learning identified.»

The research complements other work being done in Dr. Roberts» lab, including an ongoing study funded by the federal BRAIN Initiative research program to understand how the brain functions during vocal learning.

Most examples of vocal learning come from animals in which males produce learned songs to attract females such as song birds [1], baleen whales [2], phocid seals [3] and bats [4].

In both humans and songbirds, vocal learning depends on auditory guidance to achieve and maintain optimal vocal output.

These observations, coupled with the anatomical abnormalities of humans bearing FOXP2 mutations [20], support a role for FoxP2 in the development of neural structures that subserve vocal learning.

Sanvito, S., Galimberti, F. and Miller, E. H. Vocal learning in southern elephant seals.

«It is yet another confirmation that learning is central to how killer whales acquire their vocal repertoire, and further confirms the status of the cetaceans as one of the few groups of mammals to have evolved true vocal learning,» said Dr. Luke Rendell, a lecturer in biology at the University of St. Andrews.

Evidence for vocal learning in juvenile male killer whales, (Orcinus orca), from an adventitious cross-socializing experiment.

This ability, known as vocal learning, is one of the underpinnings of language.

Jarvis says the new study «points us more firmly in a direction that vocal learning ability is functioning in a specialized motor system.

Researchers have shown that the gene is associated with vocal learning in young songbirds, which produce higher levels of FOXP2 protein when they need to learn new songs.

Now, University of San Diego graduate student Whitney Musser and Hubbs - SeaWorld Research Institute senior research scientist Dr. Ann Bowles have found that killer whales (Orcinus orca) can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the types of sounds they made to more closely match their social partners.

Songbirds thus provide an important model for the study of neural mechanisms underlying vocal learning.

The bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, is one of very few animals that, through vocal learning, can invent novel acoustic signals and copy whistles of conspecifics.

Social guidance of vocal learning by female cowbirds validating its functional significance.

The mimicry of the whale, now deceased, was no match for that of a parrot, but is an example of vocal learning, nonetheless

In addition to having defined centers in the brain that control vocal learning called «cores,» parrots have what the scientists call «shells,» or outer rings, which are also involved in vocal learning.

That correlation suggests our musical ability grew out of the vocal learning system instead of being «a special - purpose ability,» Patel says.

The parrot's brain has a nested «core and shell» structure for vocal learning.

Until now, the budgerigar (common pet parakeet) was the only species of parrot whose brain had been probed for the mechanisms of vocal learning.

Neurons in the shell surrounding the established vocal centers of the parrot brain play a part in vocal learning and other complex motor behaviors, resolving controversies over the size of brain areas involved in song and speech imitation.

Mice, more convenient research subjects than, say, dolphins, can be models for studying the genetics and neurobiology of vocal learning.

Humans were thought to be the only primate with vocal learning — the ability to hear a sound and repeat it, considered essential for speech.

(The only other animals known to be capable of vocal learning are humans, elephants, a few marine mammals including whales and dolphins, and bats.)

One way to identify genes involved in vocal learning is to compare the genomes of vocal - learning birds with their nonvocal - learning evolutionary cousins.

While at first glance language and bird evolution may appear unrelated, three groups of birds — parrots, songbirds, and hummingbirds — are among the few animals capable of imitating sounds they hear, a trait called vocal learning that provides the foundation for language.

Vocal learning — the ability to learn and imitate sounds — is a trait humans share with only a few other species, most notably, songbirds.

Before the consortium came together, he had participated in sequencing the genomes of two vocal learners, a songbird and a parrot, but he knew he couldn't do all of the additional sequencing and analysis work that would be required to identify genes related to vocal learning — not by himself, at least — so he teamed up with Genome 10K, a project aiming to collect genomes for 10,000 vertebrate species.

Stories on the stressful impact of urban violence on children, the shared aptitudes of humans and songbirds for vocal learning, and the impact of climate change on the forests of Minnesota and beyond, are among the winners of the 2015 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards.