Social
Modulation of Songbird Learning
A simple animal model for the acquisition of social behavior is the
songbird, which learns to sing in much the same way that humans learn
language. In particular, normal song learning is dependent both on
hearing the songs of others during a critical period, and on social
cues from adults. A Network-supported study is examining how these
social cues (or their absence) change both brain and behavior in adult
birds vs. in birds still learning to sing. Studies in a simple animal
model like this can shed light on the neural mechanisms involved in
social modulation of learning.
This study uses several new methods that should prove enlightening. One
new method has yielded interesting findings, namely that depleting the
bird’s brain of dopamine (a neurotransmitter thought to be
critical for learning and attention) alters the bird’s
ability to learn to sing properly. This suggests that dopamine may be
produced or transmitted differently in birds who learn to sing from in
a social situation (from a live “tutor” bird)
compared to those birds who learn to sing from a tape, which has been
shown to inhibit proper song learning.
Ihle, E.C., Carillo, G.D., Giorgetti,
M., Tecott, L., and Doupe, A.J. (2003). Measurement and manipulation of
dopamine in the awake, behaving zebra finch basal ganglia. Society
for Neuroscience Abstracts, 294.6.
Back
to New
Methods for Studying Brain-Behavior Relations
Back to Research