Spot of Understanding - Songbirds have songs wired in

Zebra finch - Image from Wikipedia

New research findings on the singing of zebra finches could enlighten us more about how humans learn to speak. Michale Fee a researcher with MIT and his colleagues have fresh findings that show how songbirds like the zebra finch know how they ought to sing. They even have a separate region that enables these birds to identify mistakes in their songs. By monitoring the electrical activity of cells in the zebra finches while they sang the researchers found that some cells became active when they made a mistake allowing them to correct themselves, according to lead author of the report, Professor Richard Hahnloser, of the University of Zurich.

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