![]() Adult zebra finches must undergo surgery to allow scientists to attach electrodes to multiple muscles. Focusing on the muscles may be a more direct way to capture the mechanics of the serenades of snoozing-but it still isn’t easy. Both studies focus on the way scientists study the finches' vocal muscles, in hopes of unlocking more secrets of the slumbering birdbrain.įirst, scientists led by Juan Doppler, a physicist working under Mindlin’s supervision, wanted to make it easier to study the birds' muscles. Last week, in two new studies, Mindlin’s group expands on their research. “Now we have a model that doesn’t need the brain,” he says. This new research was able to capture variation that previous studies of the brain couldn’t, and suggests that the musical mind meanders when zebra finches nod off.įor Mindlin, this was huge. The birds' vocal muscles appear to go slightly on the fritz at night, composing silent songs that don’t stick to the scripts of daytime. The study also found that sleep wasn’t just a time to rehearse-it may also give the birds a chance to quietly improvise new tunes. Margoliash has previously collaborated with Mindlin’s group but was not involved in these studies. “Now instead of looking at one cell at a time, we can see the output of the whole system, and that’s very exciting,” says Daniel Margoliash, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Chicago who has studied birdsong for over three decades. In previous work, his research team, in partnership with scientists at the University of Utah, found that zebra finches move their vocal muscles in sync with song-like activity in the brain, indicating that the muscles’ readout could be a good proxy for peeking into the birds’ melodic reveries. Together with his colleagues, Mindlin, a professor of biophysics who studies the mechanics of birdsong, designed a system to directly measure the activity of the muscles involved. To translate the pattern in the brain to a full-blown serenade, a bird’s vocal organ needs to first carry out the marching orders. Brains control behavior, but there’s a muscley middleman between the two. ![]() To better understand the inner workings of these drowsy birdbrains, Gabriel Mindlin’s research group at the University of Buenos Aires decided to move one step further in the chain of musical command. "I had this crazy dream last night but I forgot to write it down."īut studying the dreamscape of a slumbering zebra finch is no easy feat: It’s not like we can nudge the birds awake and ask. Like human speech, the melodies of birdsong are intricate and complex, and even activate brain pathways and muscles very similar to those in humans. Scientists think that studying how the birds use sleep to learn their songs can help us understand the mysterious process of human language acquisition. In the morning, the finches wake groggy and disoriented, babbling slightly less coherently than the previous day-but as time progresses, their songs improve. This may have a lot to do with crystallizing and reshaping material learned from their tutors-a phenomenon comparable to snoozing humans packaging memories and information into long-term storage. Researchers theorize that the birds are, in effect, dreaming of song-more sleep lip-syncing than sleep singing. Its vocal cords vibrate, too, but don’t produce any sound: The birds aren't pushing enough air through their throats to generate audible noise. ![]() Hearing their own voices seems to be a crucial element for little zebra finches as they test the notes and syllables out for themselves.Ĭertainly, practice makes perfect-but even more crucial? A good night’s sleep.Īfter a hard day at school, each zebra finch heads to bed with music on the mind-so much so that its brain will flicker in and out of the same patterns that occur during daily practice sessions. The tutor will warble patiently for its students, who will then utter their own tentative vocalizations. The finches aren’t born belting arias instead, they learn their songs in adolescence, practicing and tinkering under the supervision of an adult tutor. In the past two decades, scientists have found that sleep is a critical part of the zebra finch song-learning repertoire. And, according to scientists, they do everything but: As they slumber, zebra finches fire up brain regions and vibrate their vocal cords in ways that mimic wakeful warbling. Zebra finches are so good at singing, they could do it in their sleep.
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