“It’s similar to human infants who begin to babble at around six months without actually talking.”ĭuring this sensitive listening phase, a male zebra finch pays closest attention to the song of its father, even though it can hear other adult males nearby.
“Up until around day 50, they are making little cheeps and warbles, what we call ‘subsong,’” Pilgeram explains. Only adult males sing, primarily to court females.įrom the time they hatch, the males begin listening for song, and memorizing particular songs, even before they can actually sing one. In the wild they nest together in large colonies. Her lab is working with researchers at the Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta to maximize any potential translational impact of its research findings. The paper builds on previous work by the Maney lab regarding the hormonal and genetic influences on social behavior. Instead they preferred to listen to and eventually learn the song of a male they heard when their oxytocin receptors were allowed to function normally. In experiments, blocking the young birds’ oxytocin receptors while they listened to a male biased the birds against that male’s song. In the current paper, the researchers show how oxytocin, a hormone essential to social bonding, influences young finches exposed only to the songs of unfamiliar males. This social process holds some similarities for how children learn to speak, making the birds a laboratory model for the neural underpinnings of social vocal learning. Young male zebra finches learn to sing by listening to an adult male tutor that they choose to pay close attention to, normally their biological father or a “foster” father who nurtures them. “Our results suggest that the neurochemistry of early social bonds, particularly during language learning, may be relevant in studies of autism,” adds Donna Maney, a professor of neuroscience in Emory’s Department of Psychology and senior author of the study. “It’s basic science that may lead to insights into the process of vocal learning across the animal kingdom, including humans.” “We found that the oxytocin system is involved from an early age in male zebra finches learning song,” says Natalie Pilgeram, first author of the study and an Emory PhD candidate in psychology. Scientific Reports published the findings, which add to the understanding of the neurochemistry of social learning. Oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone,” plays a key role in the process of how a young zebra finch learns to sing by imitating its elders, suggests a new study by neuroscientists at Emory University.
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