A deeper understanding of avians - and ourselves - through song

Science + Technology

UCLA professor Stephanie White discusses what birds could teach us about communication

Maybe it’s that pesky little issue of lacking self-propelled flight, but as decidedly earthbound mammals, we humans often feel far removed from birds when we think of evolutionary commonalities. Nonetheless, scientists on campus continue to find striking similarities between us.

Stephanie White, a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology and director of UCLA’s Undergraduate Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, discusses how her fascination with birds has resulted in unique neuroscience research into the biology behind how our brains make communication possible.

What first made you interested in studying birds?

I think it’s just the crazy idea that there was no predecessor on the evolutionary tree leading to both birds and humans that had the ability to learn its vocalizations, and yet our brains evolved in very surprisingly similar ways in terms of getting that ability to socially communicate by creating new sounds. In our lab, we are trying to understand how our brains are capable of moving our oral facial musculature in the service of communicating.

What is special about the two birds that your lab studies, zebra and Bengalese finches?

Of the approximately 4,500 different species of songbirds, zebra finches are one of the many species in which only the males learn the courtship song, whereas the females judge its quality. This gives you a brain that has this ability, and a brain of the same species that doesn’t, which is a real gift as scientists can use females as their control group, for example.

About 300 years ago, the Bengalese finches were domesticated from a species called the white-rumped munia. During those centuries of domestication, their evolution has produced more complex songs. So unlike the zebra finch, which has a repetitive motif where it just sings over and over again, the Bengalese is more of a jazz musician and can improvise a little bit. Work by our collaborator Kazuo Okanoya has actually shown that if you play the Bengalese finch song to the ancestral species, the female munia will start building a nest for the more jazzy song.

What can we learn about humans by studying these birds?

We both have critical developmental windows during which we learn best. It also turns out that there’s similar brain anatomy and similar genes involved. If you know neuroscience, you’ll know that we have cortico-basal ganglia loops. We use those for our language production, and so do birds for their song production. Our lab has been looking at transcription factors or master gene regulators in the brain, including those that are mutated in humans with speech and language disorders, and we ’ re seeing how they may be acting by looking at the bird brain.

What would you like readers to think of the next time they hear a songbird?

There have been many popular articles written about how gratifying becoming a birder can be. If you start paying attention to not only seeing them, but also listening to them, it brings nature home to you in a way that ’ s very accessible.

What do you find most surprising about working with birds?

The promise of interspecies communication! When I visit the aviaries and whistle, they all get very quiet, and then, slowly, the males start singing. And if someday, some alien species contacts us, we’ll face a similar situation. I think that interspecies communication is an underrated mystery.