Washington: Scientists claim to be gaining
insight into how the human brain functions with the help of a little singing bird, which may lead to a better understanding of human speech production and speech disorders.
A team at Penn State University, led by Dezhe Jin, is
looking at how songbirds transmit impulses through nerve cells
in the brain to produce a complex behavior, such as singing.
"We are not only interested in birds. We are
ultimately interested in studying how the human brain works
and better understanding ourselves," Jin said.
While many animals communicate vocally, songbirds
are among the few that learn their communication sounds in a
manner similar to humans. Although human and bird brains are
different, researchers believe that both the speech and song
learning processes involve similar neural mechanisms.
"It is very hard to do human experiments. So, to
conduct these experiments, we use the songbird. Songbirds are
much simpler than humans, and have fewer neurons," Jin said.
Alexay Kozhevnikov, assistant professor of physics,
works with Jin to conduct recordings of brain activity that
occurs in songbirds during singing. In this way, the bird`s
brain acts as a lab for understanding neural networking.
Because the major brain components involved in song
production are well documented, Jin uses them as a framework
for designing computational models. He can test these models
against the neural recordings, and eventually determine how
the interconnection of these networks leads to syllable
production and syntax.
PTI