Brains of parrots, unlike songbirds, use human-like vocal control

Human speech arises courtesy of some significant neural horsepower. Different areas of the brain are involved in determining the meaning that's desired, finding the words to express it, and then converting those words to a specific series of sounds—and all that comes before the correct sequence of nerve impulses is sent to the muscles that produce the final output. Humans are far from alone in the animal kingdom with an impressive range of vocalizations, though. That raises the prospect that we can understand a bit more about our own speech by studying how vocalization is managed in different animals.

One group of species that's especially interesting is birds. They're distant relatives compared to other animals with interesting vocal capabilities, like whales and elephants, and their brains have some notable differences from ours. They also show a range of behaviors, from complex songs to vocal mimicry to whatever it is that you want to call what parrots do. Thanks to a newly released study, however, we now have evidence that these different types of vocalization are the product of different control systems in the brain.

The study relied on electrodes placed in the brains of parrots and songbirds and tracked the behavior of neurons in a region that controls vocalization. It showed that the two relied on different types of control, with parrots having a system that operates similarly to the one used by humans.

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