Linking Vocal Learning to Social Reward in the Brain

The Oxford Handbook of Voice Perception ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198743187.013.14 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 308-336

Author(s):

Samantha Carouso Peck ◽

Michael H. Goldstein

Keyword(s):

Social Behaviour ◽

Vocal Learning ◽

Speech Development ◽

Social Reward ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Human Infants ◽

Interconnected System ◽

Parallel Processes ◽

Vocal Control ◽

And Control

The social environment plays an important role in vocal development. In songbirds, social interactions that promote vocal learning are often characterized by contingent responses of adults to early, immature vocalizations. Parallel processes have been discovered in the early speech development of human infants. Why does contingent social feedback facilitate vocal learning so effectively? Answers may be found by connecting the neural mechanisms of vocal learning and control with those involved in processing social reward. This chapter extends the idea of Newman’s social behaviour network, a tightly interconnected system of limbic areas across which social behaviour and motivation are distributed, to an avian social/vocal control network. It explores anatomical and functional overlaps between song circuitry and social-motivational circuitry, describing how circuitry linking basal ganglia with cortical areas serves to integrate social reward with vocal control and may underlie socially guided vocal learning. In species that have evolved socially guided vocal learning, a unique link has been forgedbetween social circuitry and vocal learning systems, such that learning is driven by social motivation.

Download Full-text

Traffic noise disrupts vocal development and suppresses immune function

Science Advances ◽

10.1126/sciadv.abe2405 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (20) ◽

pp. eabe2405

Author(s):

Henrik Brumm ◽

Wolfgang Goymann ◽

Sébastien Derégnaucourt ◽

Nicole Geberzahn ◽

Sue Anne Zollinger

Keyword(s):

Immune Function ◽

Noise Exposure ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Vocal Learning ◽

Noise Pollution ◽

Experimental Models ◽

Speech Development ◽

Vocal Development ◽

Learning Impairments ◽

Cognitive Deficiencies

Noise pollution has been linked to learning and language deficits in children, but the causal mechanisms connecting noise to cognitive deficiencies remain unclear because experimental models are lacking. Here, we investigated the effects of noise on birdsong learning, the primary animal model for vocal learning and speech development in humans. We found that traffic noise exposure retarded vocal development and led to learning inaccuracies. In addition, noise suppressed immune function during the sensitive learning period, indicating that it is a potent stressor for birds, which is likely to compromise their cognitive functions. Our results provide important insights into the consequences of noise pollution and pave the way for future studies using birdsong as an experimental model for the investigation of noise-induced learning impairments.

Download Full-text

Vocal Creativity in Elephant Sound Production

Biology ◽

10.3390/biology10080750 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (8) ◽

pp. 750

Author(s):

Angela S. Stoeger ◽

Anton Baotic ◽

Gunnar Heilmann

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Positive Reinforcement ◽

Sound Production ◽

Vocal Learning ◽

Learning Processes ◽

Fine Tuning ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Nasal Tissue ◽

Production Techniques ◽

Production Mechanisms

How do elephants achieve their enormous vocal flexibility when communicating, imitating or creating idiosyncratic sounds? The mechanisms that underpin this trait combine motoric abilities with vocal learning processes. We demonstrate the unusual production techniques used by five African savanna elephants to create idiosyncratic sounds, which they learn to produce on cue by positive reinforcement training. The elephants generate these sounds by applying nasal tissue vibration via an ingressive airflow at the trunk tip, or by contracting defined superficial muscles at the trunk base. While the production mechanisms of the individuals performing the same sound categories are similar, they do vary in fine-tuning, revealing that each individual has its own specific sound-producing strategy. This plasticity reflects the creative and cognitive abilities associated with ‘vocal’ learning processes. The fact that these sounds were reinforced and cue-stimulated suggests that social feedback and positive reinforcement can facilitate vocal creativity and vocal learning behavior in elephants. Revealing the mechanism and the capacity for vocal learning and sound creativity is fundamental to understanding the eloquence within the elephants’ communication system. This also helps to understand the evolution of human language and of open-ended vocal systems, which build upon similar cognitive processes.

Download Full-text

An animal model of life-threatening hyperthermia during infancy

Journal of Applied Physiology ◽

10.1152/jappl.1992.73.1.340 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 73 (1) ◽

pp. 340-345 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

D. S. Jardine ◽

R. H. Haschke

Keyword(s):

Animal Model ◽

Sudden Infant Death ◽

Sudden Infant ◽

Human Infants ◽

Normal Body Temperature ◽

Life Threatening ◽

Radiant Heater ◽

Weanling Piglets ◽

And Control ◽

Experimental Group

A mathematical model of heat balance in human infants suggests that it may be possible for severe hyperthermia to develop if an infant is unable to remove his blankets in response to overheating (thermal entrapment). This hypothesis was tested in an animal model of weanling piglets. Ten piglets were warmed in a radiant heater to rectal temperature of 41 degrees C to simulate a fever. Animals in the experimental and control groups were removed from the heater and covered with ordinary infant blankets (to a thickness of approximately 3 cm). Endogenously produced heat caused the animals to warm to 42 degrees C. At this point, the control animals were uncovered. They rapidly cooled to normal body temperature. Animals in the experimental group remained covered until they expired from hyperthermia at 43.9 +/- 0.7 degrees C (SD) after 96 +/- 43 (SD) min. These data show that lethal hyperthermia may result from thermal entrapment. This finding may help clarify the role that hyperthermia may play in illnesses such as hemorrhagic shock and encephalopathy syndrome and some cases of sudden infant death syndrome.

Download Full-text

Social Semantics: The role of conceptual knowledge and cognitive control in a neurobiological model of the social brain

10.31234/osf.io/36tm5 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Richard J Binney ◽

Richard Ramsey

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Social Information Processing ◽

Social Behaviour ◽

Conceptual Knowledge ◽

Explanatory Power ◽

Social Phenomena ◽

The Social ◽

Health And Disease ◽

And Control ◽

Social Semantics

Research in social neuroscience has primarily focused on carving up cognition into distinct pieces, as a function of mental process, neural network or social behaviour, while the need for unifying models that span multiple social phenomena has been relatively neglected. Here we present a novel framework that treats social cognition as a case of semantic cognition, which provides a neurobiologically constrained and generalizable framework, with clear, testable predictions regarding sociocognitive processing in the context of both health and disease. According to this framework, social cognition relies on two principal systems of representation and control. These systems are neuroanatomically and functionally distinct, but interact to (1) enable development of foundational, conceptual-level knowledge and (2) regulate access to this information in order to generate flexible and context-appropriate social behaviour. The Social Semantics framework shines new light on the mechanisms of social information processing by maintaining as much explanatory power as prior models of social cognition, whilst remaining simpler, by virtue of relying on fewer components that are “tuned” towards social interactions.

Download Full-text

Rapid encoding of an internal model for imitative learning

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2013.2630 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 281 (1781) ◽

pp. 20132630 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Mugdha Deshpande ◽

Fakhriddin Pirlepesov ◽

Thierry Lints

Keyword(s):

Internal Model ◽

Vocal Learning ◽

Speech Development ◽

Human Infant ◽

Imitative Learning ◽

Vocal Imitation ◽

Motor Practice ◽

Vocal Signals ◽

The Brain ◽

Major Impediment

As in human infant speech development, vocal imitation in songbirds involves sensory acquisition and memorization of adult-produced vocal signals, followed by a protracted phase of vocal motor practice. The internal model of adult tutor song in the juvenile male brain, termed ‘the template’, is central to the vocal imitation process. However, even the most fundamental aspects of the template, such as when, where and how it is encoded in the brain, remain poorly understood. A major impediment to progress is that current studies of songbird vocal learning use protracted tutoring over days, weeks or months, complicating dissection of the template encoding process. Here, we take the key step of tightly constraining the timing of template acquisition. We show that, in the zebra finch, template encoding can be time locked to, on average, a 2 h period of juvenile life and based on just 75 s of cumulative tutor song exposure. Crucially, we find that vocal changes occurring on the day of training correlate with eventual imitative success. This paradigm will lead to insights on how the template is instantiated in the songbird brain, with general implications for deciphering how internal models are formed to guide learning of complex social behaviours.

Download Full-text

Clinical Pathways and the Human Factor

Impact of Medical Errors and Malpractice on Health Economics, Quality, and Patient Safety - Advances in Medical Education, Research, and Ethics ◽

10.4018/978-1-5225-2337-6.ch001 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 1-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Vaughan Michell ◽

Jasmine Tehrani

Keyword(s):

Patient Safety ◽

Social Behaviour ◽

Human Error ◽

Best Practice ◽

Clinical Pathways ◽

Current Thinking ◽

Practice Models ◽

And Control ◽

Formal Procedures ◽

Specific Health

A key approach to improving patient safety is to seek to modify both formal and informal behaviours in response to the extensive reporting of error causes in the literature. This response is primarily in two parts; a) actions to minimise the risk of error or b) actions to control against error. For a) very valuable work has also been undertaken in running human factors courses to demonstrate and try to change poor behaviour via best practice models. In the case of b) much work has been done on increasing control regimes such as checklists and also formal rules in formal procedures. However, these actions tend to be specific to specific health units, are often piecemeal and are not integrated to complement each other. Little work has been done to integrate these formal and informal/social behaviour into clinical pathways or health activities. This chapter reviews current thinking and develops a methodology and proposal for identification and control of human error in clinical pathways based on the research of the two authors.

Download Full-text

Sex hormone influence on human infants' sound characteristics: melody in spontaneous crying

Biology Letters ◽

10.1098/rsbl.2014.0095 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 10 (5) ◽

pp. 20140095 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Kathleen Wermke ◽

Johannes Hain ◽

Klaus Oehler ◽

Peter Wermke ◽

Volker Hesse

Keyword(s):

Vocal Learning ◽

Human Infants ◽

Healthy Infants ◽

Two Samples ◽

Vocal System ◽

Functional Lateralization ◽

The Individual ◽

Hormone Influence ◽

And Function ◽

The Brain

The specific impact of sex hormones on brain development and acoustic communication is known from animal models. Sex steroid hormones secreted during early development play an essential role in hemispheric organization and the functional lateralization of the brain, e.g. language. In animals, these hormones are well-known regulators of vocal motor behaviour. Here, the association between melody properties of infants' sounds and serum concentrations of sex steroids was investigated. Spontaneous crying was sampled in 18 healthy infants, averaging two samples taken at four and eight weeks, respectively. Blood samples were taken within a day of the crying samples. The fundamental frequency contour (melody) was analysed quantitatively and the infants' frequency modulation skills expressed by a melody complexity index (MCI). These skills provide prosodic primitives for later language. A hierarchical, multiple regression approach revealed a significant, robust relationship between the individual MCIs and the unbound, bioactive fraction of oestradiol at four weeks as well as with the four-to-eight-week difference in androstenedione. No robust relationship was found between the MCI and testosterone. Our findings suggest that oestradiol may have effects on the development and function of the auditory–vocal system in human infants that are as powerful as those in vocal-learning animals.

Download Full-text

Acquisition of an Acoustic Template Leads to Refinement of Song Motor Gestures

Journal of Neurophysiology ◽

10.1152/jn.01031.2009 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 104 (2) ◽

pp. 984-993 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Jorge M. Méndez ◽

Analía G. Dall'Asén ◽

Brenton G. Cooper ◽

Franz Goller

Keyword(s):

Muscle Activation ◽

Vocal Learning ◽

Speech Development ◽

Vocal Behavior ◽

Temporal Fine Structure ◽

Acoustic Model ◽

Activation Patterns ◽

Temporal Complexity ◽

Peripheral Motor ◽

Development Proceeds

Vocal learning, a key behavior in human speech development, occurs only in a small number of animal taxa. Ontogeny of vocal behavior in humans and songbirds involves acquisition of an acoustic model, which guides the development of self-generated vocalizations (sensorimotor period). How vocal development proceeds in the absence of an acoustic model is largely unknown and cannot be studied directly in humans. Here we explored the effects of an acoustic model on song motor control by comparing peripheral motor gestures (respiration and syringeal muscles) of tutored birds with those of birds raised in acoustic isolation. Although the overall use of syringeal muscles during song was similar in both groups, tutored birds displayed enhanced temporal patterns of activation in respiratory and syringeal motor gestures. Muscle activation was more uniformly distributed throughout the song of tutored birds than that of untutored birds. Similarly, the respiratory effort was similar for both groups, but the expiratory pulses of song contained more modulations and temporal complexity in tutored birds. These results indicate that the acquisition of an acoustic template guides a refinement of experience-independent motor gestures by increasing temporal fine structure, but there is no difference in bilateral activation patterns for a given sound between the two groups. Nevertheless, these subtle temporal changes in muscle activation give rise to pronounced acoustic differences between the songs of the tutored and untutored birds. Experience with song during ontogeny therefore guides a more refined use of experience-independent motor programs.

Download Full-text