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What birds can teach us about social learning

How does a bird learn its birdsong? Tomoko Fujii and Masashi Tanaka, from Waseda University, explored what drives a zebra finch to approach and imitate other zebra finches to learn its birdsong in a new JNeurosci paper.

The researchers explored song learning in young male zebra finches as they interacted with "tutor" adults that already knew their birdsongs. Young zebra finches preferably approached tutors that sang longer but less frequently.

Fujii and Tanaka next probed the role of a brain region traditionally linked to emotions in mammals (the amygdala) in this song-learning process. To examine the role of the amygdala, the researchers removed it from the young zebra finches.

While the loss of this brain region did not hinder song imitation, tutor selection became more unpredictable as birds pursued tutors less discerningly. Tracing neural connections in the zebra finch brain further confirmed that the amygdala doesn't necessarily drive song control and learning, but may play a role in socially selective, imitative behavior, according to the authors.