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Songbirds possess the spontaneous ability to discriminate syntactic rules

Nature Neuroscience volume 14, pages 1067–1074 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

Whether the computational systems in language perception involve specific abilities in humans is debated. The vocalizations of songbirds share many features with human speech, but whether songbirds possess a similar computational ability to process auditory information as humans is unknown. We analyzed their spontaneous discrimination of auditory stimuli and found that the Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata var. domestica) can use the syntactical information processing of syllables to discriminate songs). These finches were also able to acquire artificial grammatical rules from synthesized syllable strings and to discriminate novel auditory information according to them. We found that a specific brain region was involved in such discrimination and that this ability was acquired postnatally through the encounter with various conspecific songs. Our results indicate that passerine songbirds spontaneously acquire the ability to process hierarchical structures, an ability that was previously supposed to be specific to humans.

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Figure 1: Discrimination of SM songs.
Figure 2: Acquisition and discrimination of artificial syntactic rules.
Figure 3: Acquisition and discrimination of artificial syntactic rules with embeddings.
Figure 4: Development of the ability for syntactical analysis of syllables.
Figure 5: Involvement of the anterior nidopallium in the syntactical analysis of syllables.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N. Yokoi, M. Wajima and F. Ageta for maintenance of animals, as well as members of Watanabe laboratory for various suggestions and K. Fujita for critical reading of the initial manuscript. This work was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (K.A.) and of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (D.W.), the Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology program of Japan Science and Technology Agency (K.A.) and scientific research grants from the Sumitomo Foundation (K.A.), the Inamori Foundation (K.A.) and Takeda Science Foundation (D.W.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular and Systems Biology, Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Kentaro Abe & Dai Watanabe

  2. Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Saitama, Japan

    Kentaro Abe

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Dai Watanabe

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  1. Kentaro Abe
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K.A. conceived the project, performed all the experiments and wrote the paper. D.W. supervised the project and provided feedback on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kentaro Abe.

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Abe, K., Watanabe, D. Songbirds possess the spontaneous ability to discriminate syntactic rules. Nat Neurosci 14, 1067–1074 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2869

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