Studies involving oro-facial asymmetries in nonhuman primates have largely demonstrated a right hemispheric dominance for communicative signals and conveyance of emotional information. A recent study on chimpanzee reported the first evidence of significant left-hemispheric dominance when using attention-getting sounds and rightward bias for…

Syntax is widely considered the feature that most decisively sets human language apart from other natural communication systems. Animal vocalisations are generally considered to be holistic with few examples of utterances meaning something other than the sum of their parts. Previously, we have shown that male putty-nosed monkeys produce call…

Mouse ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are often used as behavioral readouts of internal states, to measure effects of social and pharmacological manipulations, and for behavioral phenotyping of mouse models for neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. However, little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms of rodent USV production.…

To understand the neural basis of human speech control, extensive research has been done using a variety of methodologies in a range of experimental models. Nevertheless, several critical questions about learned vocal motor control still remain open. One of them is the mechanism(s) by which neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, modulate speech and…

In this review, we place equal emphasis on production, usage, and comprehension because these components of communication may exhibit different developmental trajectories and be affected by different neural mechanisms. In the animal kingdom generally, learned, flexible vocal production is rare, appearing in only a few orders of birds and few…

Central nervous networks, be they a part of the human brain or a group of neurons in a snail, may be designed to produce distinct patterns of movement. Central pattern generators can account for the development and production of normal vocal signals without auditory feedback in non-songbirds. Songbirds need auditory feedback to develop and…

Song production in songbirds is a model system for studying learned vocal behavior. As in humans, bird phonation involves three main motor systems (respiration, vocal organ and vocal tract). The avian respiratory mechanism uses pressure regulation in air sacs to ventilate a rigid lung. In songbirds sound is generated with two independently…

Achieving a clearer picture of categorial distinctions in the brain is essential for our understanding of the conceptual lexicon, but much more fine-grained investigations are required in order for this evidence to contribute to lexical research. Here we present a collection of advanced data-mining techniques that allows the category of individual…

We do not know how vocal learning came to be, but it is such a salient trait in human evolution that many have tried to imagine it. In primates this is difficult because we are the only species known to possess this skill. Songbirds provide a richer and independent set of data. I use comparative data and ask broad questions: How does vocal…

Could a mutation in a single gene be the evolutionary lynchpin supporting the development of human language? A rare mutation in the molecule known as FOXP2 discovered in a human family seemed to suggest so, and its sequence phylogeny reinforced a Chomskian view that language emerged wholesale in humans. Spurred by this discovery, research in…

Songbirds share a number of parallels with humans that make them an attractive model system for studying the behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the learning and processing of vocal communication signals. Here we review the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms of audition in birds, and emphasize the behavioral and neural basis…

This chapter briefly reviews what is known-and what remains to be understood--about Grey parrot vocal learning. I review Greys' physical capacities--issues of auditory perception and production--then discuss how these capacities are used in vocal learning and can be recruited for referential communication with humans. I discuss cross-species…

The widely known discovery of mirror neurons in macaques shows that premotor and parietal cortical areas are not only involved in executing one's own movement, but are also active when observing the action of others. The goal of this essay is to critically evaluate the substance of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission…

Gestural communication is a modality considered in the literature as a candidate for determining the ancestral prerequisites of the emergence of human language. As reported in captive chimpanzees and human children, a study in captive baboons revealed that a communicative gesture elicits stronger degree of right-hand bias than non-communicative…

Two experiments tested language switching effects with bilingual participants in a priming paradigm with masked primes (duration of 50ms in Experiment 1 and 100ms in Experiment 2). Participants had to monitor target words for animal names, and ERPs were recorded to critical (non-animal) words in L1 and L2 primed by unrelated words from the same or…