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The neurobiology and evolution of vocal learning and spoken language

Air date: Wednesday, November 29, 2023, 2:00:00 PM
Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local
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Description: This lecture, established in 2011, recognizes Marshall Nirenberg for his work to decipher the genetic code, which resulted in his receiving the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Nirenberg’s research career at the NIH spanned more than 50 years, and his research also focused on neuroscience, neural development, and the homeobox genes. The Nirenberg lecture recognizes outstanding contributions to genetics and molecular biology. The focus of Jarvis' research is the vocal learning capabilities in birds and how they learn to mimic sounds.His research with songbirds is being used to show the evolution of human language capacity and speech disorders. To accomplish this objective, Dr. Jarvis takes an integrative approach to research, combining behavioral, anatomical, electrophysiological, molecular biological, and genomic techniques. The discoveries of Dr. Jarvis and his collaborators include the first findings of natural behaviorally regulated gene expression in the avian brain, social context dependent gene regulation, convergent vocal learning systems across distantly related animal groups, the FOXP2 gene in vocal learning birds, and the finding that vocal learning systems may have evolved out of ancient motor learning systems. His cutting-edge research identifies the neurological basis of birdsong at the tissue, cellular and genetic levels. A recent project seeks to transform birds without songs such as pigeons into birds that sing by genetic neuro-engineering, e.g. injecting new genes into the forebrain. If successful, this could have implications for treating patients with loss of speech after stroke.

For more information go to https://oir.nih.gov/wals
Author: Erich D. Jarvis, Ph.D.
Runtime: 1 hour