“If asked to make a comparison, most people would say that a human baby is more like a monkey than a songbird. But, when it comes to the ability to make sounds, we share more with songbirds than with our primate cousins …” View more …
“‘Studying fine motor behavior is vital for a lot of neurological disorders in humans, but traditional research subjects like mice are difficult to quantify for those kinds of actions,’ says Pfenning. ‘With birdsong, meanwhile, there are far more exact metrics, like the precision of the pitch, the timing/rhythm of the notes and even the higher-level …
“Scientists have produced a new family tree for nearly all species of birds alive today, drawing on a massive DNA analysis to gain insights into evolutionary history.” View more …
“New research on the bird genome has revealed that the same genes that give humans the ability to speak give birds the ability to sing. Because of this similarity, researchers will be able to use birds as lab subjects to better understand how speech evolved.” View more …
“It’s not just great minds that think alike. Dozens of the genes involved in the vocal learning that underpins human speech are also active in some songbirds. And knowing this suggests that birds could become a standard model for investigating the genetics of speech production – and speech disorders.” View more …
“Researchers have gained new insights into the brain by decoding the genome of the zebra finch, a songbird whose males learn a single love song from their fathers that they repeat through life.” View more …
“Scientists have created a ‘blueprint’ of the genome of a songbird. The advance, described in the journal Nature, could reveal some of the evolutionary secrets of vocal learning in animals, including humans.” View more …
Neurogenomics Laboratory