Work

A complex social-acoustical environment supports development and maintenance in the zebra finch auditory pallium

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Young zebra finches need to hear songs and calls from many birds to maintain and develop normal auditory brain circuits. When birds are raised in impoverished social-acoustical environments, the functional properties of auditory neurons change from fledging through adulthood, losing the ability to discriminate and encode vocal signals effectively. Remarkably, these deficits occur despite normal exposure to tutor song, suggesting that song memorization and auditory perception rely on different developmental mechanisms with distinct experience requirements.

Source: Journal of Neurophysiology

DOI: 10.1152/jn.00247.2025

Authors: Samantha M. Moseley, C. Daniel Meliza

Institution: University of Virginia

Language: English

Topic: Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior

Subfield: Developmental Biology

Field: Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Awards: CAREER: Neural mechanisms of auditory object recognition, G4870691799, G761587785