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Bird Brains Explain How Humans Learn to Talk
eaglebtc writes "A team of neuroscientists at MIT have made tremendous progress in understanding how birds learn to sing: a part of the brain called the basal ganglia is primarily responsible for controlling the learning of movement and the production of speech. This circuitry is also present in humans, and it is the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults. It is hoped that this research can provide further insights into Parkinson's Disease, an inherited genetic condition that causes rapid breakdown of motor control and speech production. The full research study is available as a downloadable PDF."
Does this explain the propensity of birds in trees near parking lots to mimic the random yuppie's car alarm?
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Open Source Sysadmin
I have a bird brain, but I'm too chicken to admit it.
Be relentless!
Their basal ganglia are starting to depolarize!
...it is the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults.
Proficient speech? Have you heard the way people talk? Sometimes I'm surprised they can dress themselves in the morning.
Bird brain people talk all the time
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Considering our common ancestor was so far back, what's more likely: parallel and independent development of speech in more recent years, or a singular development WAY back in the day? If the case is the latter, we should expect to find this evolutionary trait in quite a few species out there.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
This circuitry is also present in humans, and it is the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults.
and here folks, we can see that this circuitry can also be reactivated in "adults", when the baby babbling comes back in grown-ups under certain conditions, such as posting on Slashdot.
However, under these circumstances, it tends to become a mass-babbling, where several adults mumble the same things over and over, such as "forsty piss", "gnaa", "soviet russia," or "yoda doll".
An interesting subject for pedopsychiatrists to be sure...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Wow, a 5.0 MB link from the main page of Slashdot! Here's a mirror of the PDF documents if the original site goes down.
Parkinson's Disease, an inherited genetic condition
While there's some genetic risk factors, it's not know what causes parkinsons disease. According to wikipedia having a parent with Parkinsons increases your lifetime risk of getting it from 2% to 6%.
AccountKiller
This circuitry is also present in humans, and it is the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults.
Does it also explain why that said adults immediately regress back to random babbling the minute they're confronted with a keyboard and a net connection?
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
The parrot and cockatoo species of birds offer some amazing insight into the likely evolution of intelligence and social interaction outside the human/mammal pathway.
To start with, birds in general have their origins traced back to dinosaur-era reptiles. That's a pretty huge developmental shift between humanity and bird.
Yet, many species of birds can not only learn to speak human words, but they can learn context and how to use those words to manipulate people and other creatures. The birds in my parents pet store have learned more than just how to act in order to get treats, but how to manipulate people and other animals for seemingly the sheer pleasures and social interaction of it. It's hard to think of such use of intelligence as a base condition of animals that were ancestors of both mammals and dinosaurs - it seems more likely that intelligence itself is an independantly developed extension of logic.
As a smaller-scale example, Cockatoos are a more ancient species of bird than modern parrots. They also develop intelligence of many sorts, though of a more social nature. They can learn to speak words and immitate, but use the manipulation of those words on a more purely social level than parrots. It's somewhat amazing that such a mobile and diverse set of species as birds can each acquire different uses for language and intelligence - perhaps if it weren't for the necissary limitations of flight (weight, head-body aspect ratio), the intelligent species of our planet would have been birds, not mammals.
This is no hard evidence, but it also seems to make the possibility of intelligent life outside our known observed environments seem less unlikely too - especially if it can develop in so seemingly independant circumstances, despite a somewhat shared environment.
Ryan Fenton
Some linguistics & psycholinguistics (e.g Norm Chompsky and Steve Pinker) argue the human brain is unique in that it is able to quickly master the complex grammar present in all human languages.
In fact there is even a mathematical proof that seems to indicate that human languages should be technically unlearn-able (google: EM Gold language grammar - "Language identification in the limit"). IIRC - the synopsis being that, human languages are at least as sophisticated as context free languages (and can to some degree be modeled by context free languages) and the grammar of context free languages should not be learnable from the sort of linguistic input available to a child.
So...anyhow, I'm not so sure if studying how birds learn a sequence of sounds really gets at the more interesting aspects of human language acquisition. I mean it's probably interesting in terms of how animals, and even people, learn to produce simple sequences of sounds.
But, for human language? Or, at least for the interesting, i.e. uniquely human, parts of it? For that you probably need to either study people, or possibly very similar animals like other primates.
When a baby babbles randomly, he's learning. When I do it, I'm drunk. Why is there one standard for the baby, another for me?
TFA is Slashdotted at the moment, but I don't think this has terribly much to do with Chomsky's work.
It's important to note the difference between the acquisition of *language* and the acquisition of *speech*. Congentially deaf persons are capable of acquiring the former quite naturally, in the form of Sign, which is a language (or rather, are languages) entirely of it's own. (Signed English, etc. are "hacks" in the perjorative sense -- a congenitally deaf person does not "think" in Signed English, but in some other symbolic language [ASL generally]).
Babies are capable of learning symbolic languages long before they are capable of learning speech. The two are distinct categories of development -- So, really, this doesn't "go as deep" as Chomsky's work, which concerns language development in general, and not speech in particular.
[I'm a bit drunk right now, so I'm AC.}
And since I'm AC, I'll go ahead and say that I think Chomsky is a fucking choad for his non-linguistics "work", which consists of getting insanely rich by writing books critical of every political view but his version of anarcho-syndicalism. -- but feel free do mod me independently of this viewpoint.
"And since I'm AC, I'll go ahead and say that I think Chomsky is a fucking choad for his non-linguistics "work", which consists of getting insanely rich by writing books critical of every political view but his version of anarcho-syndicalism. -- but feel free do mod me independently of this viewpoint."
Wait, so you're saying that its bad in itself that he favors one politcal theory over others? I mean, don't lots of people do this? And just for clarity, I think it'd be best to describe his political philosophy as a form of libertarian-socialism. Anarcho-syndicalism would be a form of voluntary organization that he says works well in a truly libertarian political state.
I don't know how rich he gets off of his books, and I wonder how you found this information.
From what I've seen, he has learned many phrases and words over the years, and is able to successfully use them in correct conversational context. For example, if you insult him, he will reply with a stinging "Cat!" He also asks "what's that?" when he sees a new item in a room, and laughs at jokes in movies.
What relates to this article, however, is his habit of creating random vocalizations. Often he will speak in a chaotic combination of "human-like" noises and settle on a couple that pique his fancy. A few days ago he was angry with me and started his mumblings while on my girlfriend's shoulder. He leaned closer to her ear and after a couple seconds he said something that closely resembled "Bosco bites people, Bosco bites people, Bosco bites (my name)." It was quite eerie.
My other random though was the possible connections this has to creativity. Is this the section of the brain that humans use while composing random, new music? What about scat singers who sing random combinations of sounds?
6x9=42
I keep Cockatoos. I never intended to have such large birds as pets, and would most certainly not encourage it. I landed up with them as a "gift" as the previous owner found them too difficult.
I would put their overall intelligence at around the 4 or 5 year human. With the addition that they are the most expert lock pickers.
Imagine if you will the tantrums of a 4/5 year old, add that the 4/5 year can fly, has a set of tools like a combination hammer, ice-pick, file, and nut cracker, and absolutely knows which items dotted about are the most valuable to destroy.
Often one of them imitates the phone ringing as I am about to leave the house. I could swear the blessed things are all sharing the joke.
I am often left pondering: who here is the pet?
threadeds blog
Chomsky is not in any kind of debate with Pinker as far as I know, and as far as I can tell from the article the parent linked to. The two have very similar viewpoints on the matter.
Chomsky put forth the following for how children learn language: it is a simple statistical fact that there are entire kinds of sentences that you understand and produce correctly that you are likely have to never heard before -- like English "Is the woman who is walking her dog Tom's neighbour?" where you are asking a question but there are two mini sentences, one about the woman walking her dog, and one about her being Tom's neighbor.
So you couldn't possibly be learning how to speak English (and not speak non-English) just by observing how often things occur -- because you wind up understanding that perfectly even though it just doesn't come up.
Both the claim that this really is a 'simple statistical fact' and the claim that you couldn't learn they are okay just by observing the statistical pattern have been HOTLY debated. But that is Chomsky's claim.
Something is missing, the argument goes, and that missing chunk must be mechanisms in the brain specifically dedicated to language. This too has been hotly debated, but it is both Chomsky's and Pinker's position (less so Pinker).
TFA bears on this issue in a tangential way. It's known that there's a circuit in bird brains that is required for them to learn their songs properly ('anterior forebrain pathway'). This research sheds some light on why it is required. The way I understand it (IANA neuroscientist), it is a keep-on-trucking circuit that says, 'okay, do it again. and again. and again.' Something like this mechanism is also found in humans, in the basal ganglia, so now we have maybe learned something about us.
However, many people on Chomsky's side are very suspicious of any 'generic' learning mechanisms like trial-and-error. For example, the article mentions babies' repeated babbling as a mechanism of trial-and-error to get the sounds of a language right very early on. But a potential alternate 'language-is-totally-innate' -- Chomsky/Pinker -- explanation might be that babbling does not feed back on itself, and a baby doesn't learn anything from it; rather, the baby's 'language faculty' has not matured (which happens with minimal help from what the baby hears) to the point where it can do anything else. I made this up - this is not a theory about babbling that can be found in the literature -- but it is the kind of alternative to 'general intelligence' that is often proposed.
The parent-linked article is about a book which vehemently denies Chomsky/Pinker's point of view. (FWIW I've read some of the author's other works and I think he's just a troll.)
Any basis to claim these Pentecostals aren't just acting it up?
Well, just wanted to say I think you're right, but IMHO we need to see the bigger picture than just "human speech == intelligence."
Honestly, most species have evolved some kinds of intelligence, far beyond what many humans credit them with. IMHO the parrots are a more interesting case because they can actually articulate human words, but I wouldn't discount the intelligence of animals who lack a suitable larynx for that. Everything you describe, except for actually articulating words, can be observed in at least half the mammal species I can think of.
In some cases it's not even just learning by imitation.
E.g., cats not only can learn, but are actively taught by their mother. If you've ever had a cat with kittens, you've probably noticed how she talks to them for hours. (And likely got annoyed when she does it at 4 AM.)
And if you take a kitten from his/her mom very early, he/she'll grow up to be a bit of a retarded cat. So all that meowing at night wasn't just socializing.
This isn't necessarily to say "cats are smart", but rather that most species evolved towards some kind of "smart". Natural selection favours adaptability, and adapting by learning is the most efficient kind.
Sharing information with other members of the species, i.e. _some_ form of speech (even if it means meowing, barking or chirping) was also a very immediate survival advantage. E.g., for most species of animals it's a very real advantage to be able to tell your cubs "hide!" or "come here, I brought you dinner" and the like.
In the cats' case, it's obviously a language that can transmit behaviour information to the kitten. Probably not as complex or as capable of abstraction as human language, but complex enough to tell that kitten how to act in certain circumstances, or what its priorities should be. (E.g., "wash yourself often". Cats taken very early from their mother do it less often than ones who got taught.) I.e., it might be more complex than a parrot's learning to say "hi" and "goodbye".
So basically, yeah, I'd guess that life anywhere, in any conditions, would probably tend to evolve towards some kind of intelligence and communication capabilities.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You're probably correct about Chomsky being somewhat motivated by money; I'm sure his book and lecture recording deals bring in a pritty penney. However, I think his politics go much deeper then that. First of all, he's remained politically active in several forums, and has even been arrested at protests. Second of all, there are several people who are not anarchaists who he has cited and praised the work of. NC has come out in support of much of the work of Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is about as far from an anarchaist as you can get; he's written for the imperialist think tank Project For a New American Century. Chomsky and Hitchens have written both in support and criticism for various portions of each other's work.
g .org/chomsky/index.cfm
Chomsky also puts a lot of his work online for free for someone motivated by profit.
http://www.chomsky.info/
http://www.zma
(An intresting side note: Noam Chomsky has copyrighed his more recent writting, not to himself, but to his family. Perhaps he is in worse health then he has publicaly disclosed.)
NC has a lot of important things to say and we shouldn't dismiss it out of hand because it contradicts the more conservative popular voices. Radicals should also not take his word as the gospel truth and only use it as a starting point for their own inquiry into more primary sources.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Parkinson's Disease, an inherited genetic condition that causes rapid breakdown of motor control and speech production.
It is not an inherited genetic condition. There may be genetic factors. Nor does it cause rapid breakdown. The disease is a slow breakdown over many years. And a person can have a normal lifespan. It is treatable. My grandfather had Parkinson's. He lived to be 90. He had a shuffle walk and didn't have serious tremors like other sufferers.
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