Social context has been shown to have a profound influence on brain activation in a wide range of vertebrate species. Best studied in songbirds, when males sing undirected song, the level of neural activity and expression ...

Only a few distantly related mammals and birds have the trait of complex vocal learning, which is the ability to imitate novel sounds. This ability is critical for speech acquisition and production in humans, and is attributed ...

Song-learning birds and humans share independently evolved similarities in brain pathways for vocal learning that are essential for song and speech and are not found in most other species. Comparisons of brain transcriptomes ...

In a well-studied model of social behaviour, male zebra finches sing directed song to court females and undirected song, used possibly for practice or advertisement. Although the two song types are similar, the level of ...

Vocal learning is a critical behavioral substrate for spoken human language. It is a rare trait found in three distantly related groups of birds-songbirds, hummingbirds, and parrots. These avian groups have remarkably similar ...

Based on quantitative cluster analyses of 52 constitutively expressed or behaviorally regulated genes in 23 brain regions, we present a global view of telencephalic organization of birds. The patterns of constitutively expressed ...

Many immediate early genes (IEGs) have activity-dependent induction in a subset of brain subdivisions or neuron types. However, none have been reported yet with regulation specific to thalamic-recipient sensory neurons of ...

Birds are the most species-rich class of tetrapod vertebrates and have wide relevance across many research fields. We explored bird macroevolution using full genomes from 48 avian species representing all major extant clades. ...