Whaling C S, Solis M M, Doupe A J, Soha J A, Marler P
Animal Communication Laboratory, Section of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1997 Nov 11;94(23):12694-8. doi: 10.1073/pnas.94.23.12694.
In behavior reminiscent of the responsiveness of human infants to speech, young songbirds innately recognize and prefer to learn the songs of their own species. The acoustic and physiological bases for innate recognition were investigated in fledgling white-crowned sparrows lacking song experience. A behavioral test revealed that the complete conspecific song was not essential for innate recognition: songs composed of single white-crowned sparrow phrases and songs played in reverse elicited vocal responses as strongly as did normal song. In all cases, these responses surpassed those to other species' songs. Although auditory neurons in the song nucleus HVc and the underlying neostriatum of fledglings did not prefer conspecific song over foreign song, some neurons responded strongly to particular phrase types characteristic of white-crowned sparrows and, thus, could contribute to innate song recognition.
年轻的鸣禽在行为上类似于人类婴儿对语音的反应,它们天生就能识别并更倾向于学习自己物种的歌声。研究人员对缺乏鸣叫经验的刚离巢白冠麻雀的先天识别的声学和生理基础进行了研究。一项行为测试表明,完整的同种歌声对于先天识别并非必不可少:由单个白冠麻雀短语组成的歌声以及倒放的歌声引发的鸣叫反应与正常歌声一样强烈。在所有情况下,这些反应都超过了对其他物种歌声的反应。尽管雏鸟的鸣唱核HVc和下层新纹状体中的听觉神经元并不比对异种歌声更偏好同种歌声,但一些神经元对白冠麻雀特有的特定短语类型有强烈反应,因此可能有助于先天的歌声识别。