Female calls promote song learning in male juvenile zebra finches

Linda Bistere, Carlos M. Gomez-Guzman, Yirong Xiong and Daniela Vallentin ()
Additional contact information
Linda Bistere: Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence
Carlos M. Gomez-Guzman: Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence
Yirong Xiong: University of Tübingen
Daniela Vallentin: Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Abstract Social interactions promote vocal learning, but the impact of social feedback on this process and its neural circuitry is not well understood. We studied song imitation in juvenile male zebra finches raised either in the presence or absence of adult females. Juveniles learned songs more accurately with a female present, suggesting her presence improves imitation. When female calls correlated with practice, tutees’ songs better resembled the tutor’s, hinting toward the possibility that females provide practice-specific vocalizations. Intracellular recordings of HVC projection neurons revealed that a subset of these neurons in both juveniles and adults is sensitive to female calls during listening, suggesting a consistent neural mechanism for processing important vocalizations, regardless of age. However, call-related neural responses during singing were observed only in juveniles. These findings highlight how vocalizations, beyond those of the tutor, influence the neural circuits for vocal learning and production.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53251-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-53251-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53251-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().