Brain Development Imaging Labs, Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, 6363 Alvarado Ct. #200, San Diego, CA 92120, USA.
University of California San Diego, Institute for Neural Computation, 9500 Gilman Dr. #0559, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
Curr Biol. 2019 Jul 8;29(13):R621-R622. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.035.
Spontaneous movement to music occurs in every human culture and is a foundation of dance [1]. This response to music is absent in most species (including monkeys), yet it occurs in parrots, perhaps because they (like humans, and unlike monkeys) are vocal learners whose brains contain strong auditory-motor connections, conferring sophisticated audiomotor processing abilities [2,3]. Previous research has shown that parrots can bob their heads or lift their feet in synchrony with a musical beat [2,3], but humans move to music using a wide variety of movements and body parts. Is this also true of parrots? If so, it would constrain theories of how movement to music is controlled by parrot brains. Specifically, as head bobbing is part of parrot courtship displays [4] and foot lifting is part of locomotion, these may be innate movements controlled by central pattern generators which become entrained by auditory rhythms, without the involvement of complex motor planning. This would be unlike humans, where movement to music engages cortical networks including frontal and parietal areas [5]. Rich diversity in parrot movement to music would suggest a strong contribution of forebrain regions to this behavior, perhaps including motor learning regions abutting the complex vocal-learning 'shell' regions that are unique to parrots among vocal learning birds [6]. Here we report that a sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleonora) responds to music with remarkably diverse spontaneous movements employing a variety of body parts, and suggest why parrots share this response with humans.
自发的音乐运动存在于每一种人类文化中，也是舞蹈的基础[1]。这种对音乐的反应在大多数物种（包括猴子）中都不存在，但在鹦鹉中却存在，这也许是因为它们（像人类而不像猴子）是声乐学习者，其大脑中含有强大的听觉-运动连接，赋予了它们复杂的听觉-运动处理能力[2,3]。先前的研究表明，鹦鹉可以随着音乐的节拍点头或抬脚[2,3]，但人类随着音乐移动时会使用各种各样的动作和身体部位。这对鹦鹉来说也是如此吗？如果是这样，它将限制关于鹦鹉大脑如何控制随音乐运动的理论。具体来说，由于点头是鹦鹉求偶行为的一部分[4]，抬脚是运动的一部分，这些可能是由中央模式发生器控制的本能运动，这些运动被听觉节奏所带动，而不需要复杂的运动规划。这与人类不同，人类随音乐运动涉及到包括额叶和顶叶区域在内的皮质网络[5]。鹦鹉随音乐运动的丰富多样性表明，前脑区域对这种行为有很强的贡献，也许包括紧邻独特于鹦鹉的复杂声乐学习“壳”区域的运动学习区域[6]。在这里，我们报告说，一只凤头鹦鹉（Cacatua galerita eleonora）会用各种身体部位做出非常多样化的自发运动来回应音乐，并提出了为什么鹦鹉和人类会有这种反应。
