Mouse vocal communication system: are ultrasounds learned or innate?
Abstract
Mouse ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are often used as behavioral readouts of internal
states, to measure effects of social and pharmacological manipulations, and for behavioral
phenotyping of mouse models for neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
However, little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms of rodent USV production.
Here we discuss the available data to assess whether male mouse song behavior and
the supporting brain circuits resemble those of known vocal non-learning or vocal
learning species. Recent neurobiology studies have demonstrated that the mouse USV
brain system includes motor cortex and striatal regions, and that the vocal motor
cortex sends a direct sparse projection to the brainstem vocal motor nucleus ambiguous,
a projection previously thought be unique to humans among mammals. Recent behavioral
studies have reported opposing conclusions on mouse vocal plasticity, including vocal
ontogeny changes in USVs over early development that might not be explained by innate
maturation processes, evidence for and against a role for auditory feedback in developing
and maintaining normal mouse USVs, and evidence for and against limited vocal imitation
of song pitch. To reconcile these findings, we suggest that the trait of vocal learning
may not be dichotomous but encompass a broad spectrum of behavioral and neural traits
we call the continuum hypothesis, and that mice possess some of the traits associated
with a capacity for limited vocal learning.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11204Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1016/j.bandl.2012.10.002Publication Info
Arriaga, Gustavo; & Jarvis, Erich D (2013). Mouse vocal communication system: are ultrasounds learned or innate?. Brain Lang, 124(1). pp. 96-116. 10.1016/j.bandl.2012.10.002. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11204.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Erich David Jarvis
Adjunct Professor in the Deptartment of Neurobiology
Dr. Jarvis' laboratory studies the neurobiology of vocal communication. Emphasis is
placed on the molecular pathways involved in the perception and production of learned
vocalizations. They use an integrative approach that combines behavioral, anatomical,
electrophysiological and molecular biological techniques. The main animal model used
is songbirds, one of the few vertebrate groups that evolved the ability to learn vocalizations.
The generality of the discoveries is tested in other vocal lear

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