Implications for lateralization of bird song from unilateral gating of bilateral motor patterns

Article Abstract:

An analysis of the functional lateralization of the brain in brown thrashers, Toxostoma rufum, reveals that lateralization occurs in the activity of the muscles involved in sound production. The sound is produced by the regulation of airflow through both sides of the syrinx. Other syringeal muscles do not exhibit lateralization, indicating that lateralization was evolved only for sound production and not for reducing the occupied brain space for other activities.

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Vocal gymnastics and the bird brain

Article Abstract:

Singing is a complicated behaviour in songbirds that must be learned, and it is still not well understood how sound is produced by the sryinx, the birds' vocal organ. Fee and colleagues have analyzed the zebra finch song which revealed liner and nonlinear phenomena. It had been assumed that the pattern of song is controlled by the central nervous system, but Fee and colleagues have discovered that the patterns are independent of complex central control

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