Sub sections:
Babbling may not be unique to human infants
An investigation into unguided vocal practice in humans and songbirds
Professor Gisela Kaplan,
Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour
School of Science and Technology
Monday 20th October
12 noon–1pm
Seminar Room 2 (Rm 31), Psychology Building SO6
Debates on song production, song development and song maintenance have received particularly strong impetus from neuroscience. The avian forebrain (now called the pallium) does not share the layered structure of the mammalian cortex but as is being discovered, it has many of the same functions. Importantly, birds share with humans (but few other orders and species) the ability to learn vocalisations. Understanding the mechanisms in bird vocal development may have substantial implications for research on human speech development also in cases of impairments of the latter. This paper will present some of the results of 5 years of research into vocal development and vocal learning of the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen). My findings suggest that the acquisition of vocal repertoire seems to follow discreet stages of development and of phonetic play (such as babbling) and these roughly correspond to human language development. Crucially, as of May this year, following the simultaneous publication of three different papers (in Nature, Science and PLOS one respectively), my own findings are no longer speculative and intuitive but have a basis in brain mechanisms, as shall be discussed (concerned with mirror neurons, specialised forebrain circuits for vocal babbling and neural substrates for processing functional classes of complex vocal signals). Further, my results show that brain plasticity for learning new sounds may be life-long in this species, as in humans. Given these results, songbirds may offer a pertinent model for human language development.