Within-species differences in vocal production learning in a songbird are associated with differences in flexible rhythm pattern perception

Abstract

Humans readily recognize a familiar rhythmic pattern, such as isochrony (equal timing between events) across a wide range of rates. This ability reflects a facility with perceiving the relative timing of events, not just absolute interval durations. Several lines of evidence suggest that this ability is supported by precise temporal predictions that arise from forebrain auditory-motor interactions. We have shown previously that male zebra finches, which possess specialized auditory-motor networks and communicate with rhythmically patterned sequences, share our ability to recognize isochrony independent of rate. To test the hypothesis that flexible rhythm pattern perception is linked to vocal learning, we ask whether female zebra finches, which do not learn to sing, can also recognize global temporal patterns. We find that non-singing females can flexibly recognize isochrony but perform slightly worse than males on average. These findings are consistent with recent work showing that while females have reduced forebrain song regions, the overall network connectivity of vocal premotor regions is similar to that in males and supports predictions of upcoming events. Comparative studies of male and female songbirds thus offer an opportunity to study how individual differences in auditory-motor connectivity influence perception of relative timing, a hallmark of human music perception.Media summaryWhen we recognize a song that’s played faster or slower than usual, we are detecting timing relations between sounds, not just absolute durations. This ability relies on auditory-motor interactions in the brain. Auditory-motor processing is more developed in animals that learn their vocalizations so we hypothesize that such animals are advantaged in recognizing a rhythmic pattern at different rates. We test this idea in a songbird where only males learn to sing, and find males are slightly better than females at rhythmic pattern recognition. Thus, songbirds are ideal for investigating individual differences in rhythm pattern perception and underlying brain mechanisms.

Sex differences in music perception are negligible

“…Song learning and production in the zebra finch, for example, are highly sexually dimorphic, with only males learning to produce complex song and using these songs to court females. Likely as a consequence of male zebra finches having greater forebrain song regions, males are ~9% more accurate than female zebra finches at discriminating between rhythmic and arrhythmic stimuli (Rouse et al, 2023). In chickadees, the consistency of the ratio of frequencies between two consecutive notes (frequency ratio) in a male chickadee"s !fee-bee" song is correlated with dominance and success (Christie, Mennill, & Ratcliffe, 2004), and female chickadees outperform males on the discrimination of pitch ratios in fee-bee songs (partial eta-squared: 0.163) (Hoeschele et al, 2012).…”

“The two voices,” or more? Music and gender from myth and conquests to the neurosciences

“…The capacity for vocal learning befits only a fraction of the 9,000 known bird species and affects the potential for investigations of sex differences. As a recent example, Rouse et al (2022) have ascertained that, in Zebra finches, dimorphic differences in learning of vocal production imply, among others, higher or lower performance by males or females, depending on tasks. As basic pointer, biological, hard‐wired sex differences in animal brains have been demonstrated in birds where males sing, and females do not (Nottebohm & Arnold, 1976).…”