Neural systems for vocal learning in birds and humans: a synopsis

Erich D. Jarvis

I present here a synopsis on a hypothesis that I derived on the similarities and differences of vocal learning systems in vocal learning birds for learned song and in humans for spoken language. This hypothesis states that vocal learning birds-songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds-and humans have comparable specialized forebrain regions that are not found in their close vocal non-learning relatives. In vocal learning birds, these forebrain regions appear to be divided into two sub-pathways, a vocal motor pathway mainly used to produce learned vocalizations and a pallial-basal-ganglia-thalamic loop mainly used to learn and modify the vocalizations. I propose that humans have analogous forebrain pathways within and adjacent to the motor and pre-motor cortices, respectively, used to produce and learn speech. Recent advances have supported the existence of the seven cerebral vocal nuclei in the vocal learning birds and the proposed brain regions in humans. The results in birds suggest that the reason why the forebrain regions are similar across distantly related vocal learners is that the vocal pathways may have evolved out of a pre-existing motor pathway that predates the ancient split from the common ancestor of birds and mammals. Although this hypothesis will require the development of novel technologies to be fully tested, the existing evidence suggest that there are strong genetic constraints on how vocal learning neural systems can evolve.