Temporal pattern processing in songbirds

Comins, Jordan A.; Gentner, Timothy Q.

doi:10.1016/j.conb.2014.08.003

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…absolute pitch | songbirds | comparative cognition | pitch processing | pattern perception S ongbirds are an important animal model for studying the sensorimotor mechanisms of vocal learning and the processing of learned, complex sound sequences (1)(2)(3)(4). Although birds lack the six-layered mammalian neocortex (5), the avian auditory system follows the general vertebrate plan (6), including telencephalic circuits organized in a radial columnar pattern that are anatomically (7,8), genetically (9), and functionally (10) analogous to the mammalian auditory cortical microcircuit.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Songbirds use spectral shape, not pitch, for sound pattern recognition

Bregman

Patel

Gentner

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Humans easily recognize "transposed" musical melodies shifted up or down in log frequency. Surprisingly, songbirds seem to lack this capacity, although they can learn to recognize human melodies and use complex acoustic sequences for communication. Decades of research have led to the widespread belief that songbirds, unlike humans, are strongly biased to use absolute pitch (AP) in melody recognition. This work relies almost exclusively on acoustically simple stimuli that may belie sensitivities to more complex spectral features. Here, we investigate melody recognition in a species of songbird, the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris), using tone sequences that vary in both pitch and timbre. We find that small manipulations altering either pitch or timbre independently can drive melody recognition to chance, suggesting that both percepts are poor descriptors of the perceptual cues used by birds for this task. Instead we show that melody recognition can generalize even in the absence of pitch, as long as the spectral shapes of the constituent tones are preserved. These results challenge conventional views regarding the use of pitch cues in nonhuman auditory sequence recognition.absolute pitch | songbirds | comparative cognition | pitch processing | pattern perception

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confidence: 99%

Songbirds use spectral shape, not pitch, for sound pattern recognition

Bregman

Patel

Gentner

2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Mechanisms for memorising and determining sequence identity regardless of syntax and semantics have been proposed to be precursors to speech recognition ( Petkov and Jarvis, 2012 ; Comins and Gentner, 2014 ; Wilson et al, 2017 ). In our paradigm, sequences were built from chunks of noise with no semantic content or prior meaning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning and recognition of tactile temporal sequences by mice and humans

Bale

Bitzidou

Pitas

et al. 2017

eLife

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The world around us is replete with stimuli that unfold over time. When we hear an auditory stream like music or speech or scan a texture with our fingertip, physical features in the stimulus are concatenated in a particular order. This temporal patterning is critical to interpreting the stimulus. To explore the capacity of mice and humans to learn tactile sequences, we developed a task in which subjects had to recognise a continuous modulated noise sequence delivered to whiskers or fingertips, defined by its temporal patterning over hundreds of milliseconds. GO and NO-GO sequences differed only in that the order of their constituent noise modulation segments was temporally scrambled. Both mice and humans efficiently learned tactile sequences. Mouse sequence recognition depended on detecting transitions in noise amplitude; animals could base their decision on the earliest information available. Humans appeared to use additional cues, including the duration of noise modulation segments.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.27333.001

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“…Mechanisms for memorising and determining sequence identity regardless of syntax and semantics have been proposed to be precursors to speech recognition [1, 31, 32]. In our paradigm, sequences were built from chunks of noise with no semantic content or prior meaning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning and recognition of tactile temporal sequences by mice and humans

Bale

Bitzidou

Pitas

et al. 2017

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10The world around us is replete with stimuli that unfold over time. When we hear an auditory stream 11 like music or speech or scan a texture with our fingertip, physical features in the stimulus are 12 concatenated in a particular order, and this temporal patterning is critical to interpreting the stimulus. 13To explore the capacity of mice and humans to learn tactile sequences, we developed a task in which 14 subjects had to recognise a continuous modulated noise sequence delivered to whiskers or fingertips, 15 defined by its temporal patterning over hundreds of milliseconds. GO and NO-GO sequences differed 16 only in that the order of their constituent noise modulation segments was temporally scrambled. Both 17 mice and humans efficiently performed tactile sequence learning. Mouse performance relied mainly 18 on detecting relative changes in noise amplitude over time, whereas humans appeared to have access 19 to more cues, including the duration of noise modulation segments. 20 21

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Temporal pattern processing in songbirds

Cited by 13 publications

References 86 publications

Songbirds use spectral shape, not pitch, for sound pattern recognition

Songbirds use spectral shape, not pitch, for sound pattern recognition

Learning and recognition of tactile temporal sequences by mice and humans

Learning and recognition of tactile temporal sequences by mice and humans

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