ScienceDaily (Oct. 10, 2012) — Guys
who imitate Luciano Pavarotti or Justin Bieber to get the girls aren't alone.
Male mice may do a similar trick, matching the pitch of other males' ultrasonic
serenades. The mice also have certain brain features, somewhat similar to
humans and song-learning birds, which they may use to change their sounds,
according to a new study.
"We are claiming that
mice have limited versions of the brain and behavior traits for vocal learning that
are found in humans for learning speech and in birds for learning song,"
said Duke neurobiologist Erich Jarvis, who oversaw the study. The results
appear Oct. 10 in PLOS ONE and are further described in a review
article in Brain and Language.
The discovery contradicts
scientists' 60-year-old assumption that mice do not have vocal learning traits
at all. "If we're not wrong, these findings will be a big boost to
scientists studying diseases like autism and anxiety disorders," said
Jarvis, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "The
researchers who use mouse models of the vocal communication effects of these
diseases will finally know the brain system that controls the mice's
vocalizations."
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