These Singing Mice Take Turns During Duets, Offering Insights into Human Speech

By Roni Dengler | March 1, 2019 4:00 pm

High in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, a distinct chirping sound ripples across the landscape. This high-pitched staccato refrain trills not from birds, but mice. Now researchers have found that the tiny rodents making these sounds, known as Alston’s singing mice, take turns belting out their tunes much in the same way people take turns when they talk to each other. The discovery could shed light on communication problems in human speech.

Some 10 percent of the Americans suffer from a communication disorder. Those can stem from developmental disorders like autism, or stroke-related language deficits, for example.
“Disorders related to this [turn taking] process can be really devastating,” said Michael Long, a neuroscientist at the NYU School of Medicine, who led the new research. “Everything from developmental disorders like autism to stroke-related language deficits can affect this process.”

Take Turns
To get to the root of communication disorders in the brain, the scientists set out to find an animal that mimicked the vocal behaviors of humans. Long found it in Alston’s singing mice thanks to the keen observation of a graduate student working in his laboratory. Initially, researchers were studying the mice to figure out how the brain enables animals to produce song. Then, the graduate student noticed how the mice chattered to each other when the animals’ cages were close. The rodents appeared to be carrying on conversations. That casual observation hooked Arkarup Banerjee, a research fellow in Long’s laboratory, when he came to interview for a job. “I was completely enthralled,” he said.

Banerjee spent the next few years recording the mice’s songs. “All we needed was two microphones,” Banerjee explained. “It’s basically the glory of the animals that they do this robust behavior. We can just simply measure them using microphones.”

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http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/03/01/singing-mice-take-turns-talking/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20DiscoverBlogs%20%28Discover%20Blogs%29#.XHxzAohKjIU