And then uh jumping many years later , you know , I started to dig down into these uh brain circuits to discover that these brain circuits had parallel functions with the brain circuits for humans , even though they're by a different name like brocas and laryngo motor cortex . And most recently , we discovered not only the actual circuitry and the connectivity are similar , but the underlying genes that are expressed in these brain regions in a specialized way , different from the rest of the brain are also similar between humans and songbirds and parrots . So all the way down to the genes .
We call it a can inch , right ? Uh And vice versa for the canary because there's something different about their vocal musculature or the gene or the circuitry in the brain . And with a zebra finch , even with a closely related species , if you would take a zebra finch uh young animal and in one cage next to it , place its own species , adult male , right ?
And not only that , we are discovering that mutations in these genes that cause speech deficits in humans , like in Fox P two . if you put those same mutations or similar type of deficits in these vocal learning birds , you get similar deficits . So convergence of the behavior is associated with similar genetic disorders of the behavior .
And I , we're gonna say vocal learning species in general is that for whatever reason , they seem to evolve multiple complex traits , you know , this idea that the evolving language , spoken language in particular comes along with a set of specializations . Incredible when I was coming up in neuroscience , I learned that I think it was the work of Peter Marler that um young birds learn songbirds , learn their tutor song and learn it quite , quite well . But that they could learn the song of another tutor .
Uh If a nonhuman primate or um you know , or let's say a chicken becomes deaf , uh their vocalizations don't deteriorate very little , at least . Uh while this happens in the vocal learning birds . So there were all these behavioral parallels that came along with a package .
