[lbo-talk] Natural music

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Fri Aug 1 09:37:35 PDT 2008



>>> Chris Doss

Interesting that they would find mirror neurons in 1) primates and 2) birds, despite the two having parted evolutionary ways back in the Jurassic. Either this is some crazy case of parallel evolution (which is possible, as in the case of octopus and vertebrate eyes), or lots of other animals have mirror neurons they haven't found yet. My money is on the latter possibility.

^^^^^ CB: Yes, because they seem to be the basis for imitative learning and lots of animals learn by imitation.

Only humans learn through non-imitating symbols.

--- On Thu, 7/31/08, Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:


> From: Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Natural music
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Thursday, July 31, 2008, 10:05 AM
> Regional differences detected in birdsongs
> Learning likened to human method
>
> BY ZOE ELIZABETH BUCK ● MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS ● July 31,
> 2008
>
>
>
> RALEIGH, N.C. -- Humans aren't the only creatures whose
> regional drawls and twangs give them away. The same thing
> goes for the songbirds, according to a study at Duke
> University.
>
>
>
> "If you drive around the U.S., you'll hear the
> same species of songbirds," said neurobiologist Richard
> Mooney, who has developed a unique way to study how birds
> learn and published his results this year in the journal
> Nature.
>
> "But if you listen closely, the songs sung by a swamp
> sparrow from a population in New York sound different from a
> swamp sparrow in Pennsylvania. ... It could be likened to a
> dialect, or an accent."
>
> These dialects stem from the way that birds learn to sing
> -- a process that is much like the way humans learn to talk.
>
> For most animals, including nonhuman primates,
> communicative sounds develop naturally, without the need for
> tutors. Only select bird species, humans and perhaps some
> whales incorporate both nature and nurture into
> vocalizations.
>
> The similarities between the learning processes are clear
> even on a microscopic level.
>
> "Though there's a large evolutionary distance
> between birds and humans, many of the brain mechanisms in
> the learning process turn out to be remarkably
> similar," Mooney said.
>
> These brain mechanisms include a phenomenon known as mirror
> neurons, which Mooney and his team documented in birds for
> the first time. Mirror neurons are a type of brain cell that
> fires either because the animal is performing a certain
> action, or because it is seeing another animal perform that
> same action.
>
> Using tiny devices mounted on the sparrows' heads,
> Mooney and his team at Duke were able to describe mirror
> neurons that fired in the birds' brains when they sang
> their own song or when they heard another bird sing a very
> similar song. The findings are the first descriptions of
> mirror neurons in a species other than primates and the
> first to associate them with vocalizations rather than
> movement.
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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