Brain Circuitry In Zebra Finches Demonstrated in a New Study; Social Interaction Among Birds Investigated

A recently published study is the first demonstration of the brain circuitry that's telling birds, particularly zebra finches, what incoming information they need to pay attention to.

As specified in a EurekAlert! report, in learning to communicate, a good teacher is important. Take the said bird species, for instance.

Juveniles of the zebra finches learn songs directly from a tutor, typically their father, through social interaction that keeps them motivated, not to mention on-task.

Essentially, young birds that hear songs through a speaker, minus the one-on-one instruction of the tutor, do not learn them, either.

Surrounded by Sounds

How exactly such a social component of song learning functions has long been a mystery. But now, scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology have identified the neural circuitry controlling it. Their findings have been reported in the Nature Communications journal.

According to Associate Professor Yoko Yazaki-Sugiyama, from OIST's Neural Mechanisms for Critical Period Unit, who led the study, in the wild, these bird species are surrounded by many sounds, including the songs of other kinds of birds.

She added this circuit is stimulated to signal that this song, which came from the tutor, is essential and needs to be memorized.

About two decades ago, researchers investigating human babies observed that they, too, "need a personal guide" to learn how to recognize the phonemes in the language. These said researchers speculated that social interaction involved the attention of the learners.

Brain Part Examined

Dr. Jelena Katic, a postdoc in Neural Mechanisms for Critical Period Unit and the Study's first author, said that it is quite logical, "if we are attentive, we are learning better."

They also said they wanted to understand if it is true for young birds. The study investigators focused on a brain site known as the locus coeruleus or LC, which is known to be engaged in attention and arousal.

Essentially, neurons from this particular brain part are projected to a higher-order auditory region in the brain known as the caudomedial nidopallium or NCM.

Previous studies in their laboratory suggested that this is the area the memories of the song of a tutor of a juvenile are formed in zebra finches.

Describing their study, Dr. Katic said they hypothesized that this LC-NCM circuit might be essential, although nobody had ever looked at it in juveniles.

Juvenile Birds Observed

The study authors do not know yet what cues juveniles use to capture this social context. However, they speculate that such a circuit may be particularly essential early in development when a juvenile forms its memories of songs.

In addition, they continue to investigate how such a social learning circuit works, for instance, what chemicals it's using and what kind of information the LC neurons are capturing to measure the essentiality of what a zebra finch is hearing.

Lastly, the team is exploring, too, as a Bioengineer.org report specified, what kinds of cues the juveniles are emitting that might encourage the tutor to teach them. Such an exchange between the juvenile and the tutor "is two-directional," Prof. Yazaki-Sugiyama explained.

Related information about brain bird is shown on NOVA PBS Official's YouTube video below:

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