Singing in the Brain

Natural History, Oct, 2000 by Annette Heist

Hummingbirds don't just hum--they sing. And they learn the tunes from one another.

The fact that humans learn to talk by listening to and imitating other people seems obvious. If speech were built in, as breathing and swallowing are, we would all speak the same language, free of dialect, and life might be a lot simpler (think foreign travel or peace negotiations). While children pick up language with enviable ease, the process of vocal learning is actually quite complex, and most linguists agree that there is a critical time when it should occur. But given the proper teachers and timing, most humans can learn to produce a seemingly infinite number of sounds and sound combinations.

Such is not the case with most animals. In fact, only whales, dolphins, bats, and some birds are known to have the ability to learn vocalizations. Separate a kitten from its mother or other tutor, and its mew will be basically the same as that of its littermates--a pattern that holds true for the howl of a wolf, the grunt of a gorilla, and the whinny of a horse.

Vocal learning has been repeatedly demonstrated in two bird orders, Passeriformes (specifically the oscine songbirds) and Psittaciformes (parrots), and is believed to occur in a third, the Trochiliformes (hummingbirds). By comparing brain structures in these three bird orders, which are widely separated from one another on the avian family tree, Rockefeller University biologist Claudio Mello and his colleague Erich Jarvis, of Duke University, have shown that the same areas that control song learning and production in songbirds and parrots are also present in hummingbirds, a finding that strengthens the case for vocal learning in the latter.

Most people are surprised to learn that hummingbirds even have songs. "The songs aren't particularly loud and you sort of have to know what to listen for," explains Mello. "They are higher pitched than those of songbirds, but the songs are amazingly rich, and in some species they can be quite complex."

In the 1950s biologists began to investigate the processes by which birds imitate the sounds they hear and incorporate them into songs. Appropriately enough, that work began with songbirds, a suborder that includes almost half the nearly 8,500 living species of birds. W. H. Thorpe, of the University of Cambridge, was the first to demonstrate learning in birds by performing what is now considered to be a classic experiment, involving the isolation of male chaffinches (European songbirds) in soundproof chambers equipped with speakers. Young chaffinches that heard recorded chaffinch songs were able to imitate these songs, while birds deprived of the recordings developed abnormally simple songs.

Isolation experiments are exceedingly difficult to do with hummingbirds, however. Because of their extraordinarily fast metabolism, baby hummers must be fed every ten minutes around the clock. But in 1990, this type of experiment was conducted on one species of trochilid, the Anna's hummingbird (Calypte anna). The late Luis Felipe Baptista, of the California Academy of Sciences, and Karl Schumann, at the Zoologisches Forschungs-institut in Bonn, Germany, found that a male Anna's hummingbird raised in isolation produced a much simpler song than did wild males. The song was also very different from that of three males hand-raised together. The outcomes suggested that the males were imitating each other's vocalizations--evidence that hummingbirds learn their songs. Other research showed that the nearest neighbors of hermit hummingbirds (Phaethornis longuemareus) sing more similar songs than nonneighbors of the same species; and the songs of green hermit hummingbirds (P. guy) living in Costa Rica are different from those of the same species living in Trinidad.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Fernando Nottebohm, of Rockefeller University, and several colleagues set about mapping the parts of the brain involved in the singing process. The researchers identified six anatomically distinct areas--clusters of cells called nuclei--in the forebrain of songbirds. These nuclei are organized into two distinct paths: the posterior pathway, which controls song production, and the anterior pathway, which controls song learning. Together these pathways form a song control system that must be intact if birds are to sing the songs they've learned.

Forebrain nuclei similar in structure and location have also been found in the budgerigar (an Australian parakeet). No such nuclei have been found in the birds most closely related to songbirds, the suboscines (woodcreepers, ovenbirds, antbirds), or in other nonlearners of songs such as pigeons and doves (order Columbiformes) and chickens, turkeys, and quails (order Galliformes). And before Mello and Jarvis, no one had bothered to look for these nuclei in hummingbirds.

Working with songbirds in the 1990s, bird researchers added a novel tool to their toolbox, a gene called ZENK, that would make the search for nuclei in hummingbirds much easier. Nottebohm, Mello, and Jarvis noticed that the number of activated ZENK genes in certain areas of the brain was very low when the songbirds were quiet. When the birds sang or heard songs, however, ZENK activity increased. By measuring the levels of activated ZENK in specific locations, the researchers were able to see the previously identified nuclei "in action." ZENK gave the researchers a window into the brain, enabling them to see how certain behaviors set into motion the molecular activity of cells in specific brain areas.