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The first words of a baby are
almost always hard to make any sense of, and that behavior is not limited to
humans, researchers reported in the Friday edition of the journal Science. The latest
study on a species of birds, the zebra finches, revealed that baby birds also
babble, just like human babies, before learning a song.
Scientists revealed that these
birds have a particular area of their brain devoted to this early stage, while
as adults they begin to use another area. One part of the brain is used during
the first 30 to 45 days, and becomes inactive after the birds learn
their song and start to use a different part of the brain, known as HCV.
Michael Fee, of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, leader of the study, and
his team of researchers conducted an experiment by inactivating the HCV area of
the brain. They made the amazing discovery that adult finches started babbling
like juveniles while HCV was inactive.
Fee said the process of learning
how to sing is very similar to that of learning how to move, which we find in
mammals.
And the similarities between birds
and humans’ learning process continue, Fee said, as baby birds seem to learn
adult songs by imitating their parents, just like human babies repeat what they
hear from their parents.
“We tend to think of young
animals making random movements and playing, and it doesn’t seem to have a
reason,” Fee said, according to National Geographic. “But the reason is, in
order to learn, they need to try out different things.”
The striking similarities between
us and the birds could give scientists a better idea on the human learning
process, and go further into how we think creatively, Fee said.
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