New Research Zebra finches remember songs Dad sang Archived article from Jan 23, 2006 By Ken Branson

Credit: Courtesy of David Vicario Male and female zebra finches (male with stripes; female, without stripes) play different communication roles in their families. While both deliver information about food and predators through “calls,” only the father “sings” to his offspring, which teaches them to vocalize through imitation. Researchers believe they have located a place in the brain where songbirds store the memories of their parents’ songs. In a paper published Jan. 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, David Vicario and Mimi Phan, psychologists at Rutgers, and Carolyn Pytte of Wesleyan University, report that each songbird stores the memory of its father’s songs in a part of the brain involved in hearing (in most songbird species, only the male sings). The researchers worked with zebra finches, tiny songbirds native to Australia and favored by researchers because they breed well in captivity year-round. Independent research, most notably at the University of Washington, has demonstrated that a similar mechanism may underlie the process by which human infants learn speech. Humans and songbirds are among the few animals that learn to vocalize by imitating their caregivers. This may explain what allows kids to learn any language if they start early enough, Vicario says.

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