Study reveals how the songbird changes its tune

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsFile -- Researchers at UC San Francisco have shown how the Bengalese finch, a domesticated songbird, can learn to tweak its song in specific ways depending on context, which could shed light on how the human brain learns to apply different rules depending on the situation, and have implications for understanding human language and movement disorders.

The study, published November 16, 2017, in Neuron, showed that finches switch from generic to specific versions of their songs depending on the situation they are in. What’s more, the researchers identified two distinct areas in the birds’ brains dedicated to this learning process: one region that encodes generalizable rules to produce default songs, and another area that can override the default pathway to produce different sounds for different contexts.

This is much like how your own brain learned in infancy the standard arm movement to reach and grab an object, but since then has also learned to adjust the force of your arm and grip of your hand based on the situation -- if, for example, you are picking up a full cup rather than an empty one.

“We wanted to understand how the brain balances the need to generalize learning of movements across many …

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(2017-12-04), Study reveals how the songbird changes its tune, NewsFile, 188, ISSN: 0000-0000, BUTTER® ID: 014802839