Songbirds possess the spontaneous ability to discriminate syntactic rules
Songbirds possess the spontaneous ability to discriminate syntactic rules
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DOI：
10.1038/nn.2869
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发表时间：
2011-08-01
影响因子：
25
通讯作者：
Watanabe, Dai
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Abe, Kentaro;Watanabe, Dai
语言感知中的计算系统是否涉及人类的特定能力存在争议。鸣禽的发声与人类语音有许多共同特征，但鸣禽是否具有与人类类似的处理听觉信息的计算能力尚不清楚。我们分析了它们对听觉刺激的自发辨别，发现孟加拉雀（Lonchura striata var. Domestica）可以利用音节的句法信息处理来辨别歌曲）。这些雀类还能够从合成的音节串中获取人工语法规则，并根据它们辨别新的听觉信息。我们发现，特定的大脑区域参与了这种辨别，并且这种能力是在出生后通过接触各种同种歌曲而获得的。我们的研究结果表明，雀形目鸣禽自发地获得了处理层次结构的能力，这种能力以前被认为是人类特有的。
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.