Really appreciate that - I have a running joke with my son that every time a new archaeological artifact is revealed the first statement is “this obviously held great cultural/religious/political importance” - let’s not question beg!
Yes that sounds right up my alley! I’m really interested in sequencing currently, within individual and between individuals. looking forward to it…
Very cool - appreciate the rigorous cognitive approach to trying to figure this out.
When we talked I remembered that we'd done an interview about 10 years prior, also on pinnipeds! That time sea lions with amnesia due to neurotoxic algal exposure. I always love science interviews for public radio... www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...
Did a spot on Quirks and Quarks with Bob McDonald about seal vocal neurobiology. Some other really interesting segments on there as well.
www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
"mental imagery reactivates the same sensory codes used during visual stimuli, suggesting the existence of a generative model capable of synthesizing detailed sensory contents from an abstract, semantic representation."
As a comparative psychologist I’m caught between “is there anything less alpha than using a groupon for “alpha training”?” And “non-human primate alphas are actually incredibly needy and socially dependent on others for their tenuous status so maybe this checks out…”.
The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...
Yes the whole album rules - good old Adult Swim, would never have encountered flcl (or Samurai Champloo) otherwise
youtu.be/YYnhkctWYaE
Now if they can keep time going to be somewhat deflating for our sea lion....
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This is fascinating - bees learned non-isochronous temporal patterns that indicated reward and then spontaneously generated them across tempos and sensory modalities. Bees have like 1 million neurons, so you don't need a big brain for this.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I didn't find this too bad, got ~44/50.
The sample color bars immediately create retroactive interference, which is why I think it feels hard.
BUT if you remember something you've seen that's the same color (e.g., wife's sweater) not too hard to dial it in.
Explore “Brainstorming,” @thetransmitter.bsky.social’s new LinkedIn newsletter that looks at how neuroscientists are solving research challenges. The first edition features nontraditional model organisms that are well suited for studying certain behaviors or neurological conditions.
bit.ly/4v6x506
New OA paper @royalsocietypublishing.org: What can we learn from bonobos and bottlenose dolphins about the evolution of between-group cooperation?
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
Lovely collab with @lirsamuni.bsky.social Martin Surbeck and Richard Connor.
cOMPaRatiVe cOGNitiONHumans share acousticpreferences with other animalsLogan S. James1,2,3,4* Sarah C. Woolley 1,2, Jon T. Sakata1,2,Courtney B. Hilton5,6, Michael J. Ryan3,4, Samuel A. Mehr5,7,8Many animals produce courtship sounds, and receivers prefersome sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergentevolution may generate similarities in preference across speciesand underlie Darwin’s conjecture that some animals “havenearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have.” In this study,we show that humans share acoustic preferences with a rangeof animals, that the strength of human preferences correlateswith that in other animals, and that humans respond fasterwhen in agreement with animals. Furthermore, we foundgreatest agreement in preference for adorned, ancestral, andlower-frequency sounds. humans’ music listening experiencewas associated with preferences. These results are consistentwith theories arguing that biases in processing sculpt acousticpreferences, and they confirm Darwin’s century-old hunchabout the conservation of aesthetics in nature
out now in Science: @loganjames.bsky.social collected pairs of sounds in 16 species where we *know* which sound is more attractive (to that species)
he played them to ppl on themusiclab.org, asking, in each pair, which was nicer. humans agreed w other animals
doi.org/10.1126/science.aea1202
I have a new PhD position available on any topic related to musicality or animal communication that aligns well with our current research programs. Deadline March 31: oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=795a...
For more info about my Musicality and Bioacoustics group: oeaw.ac.at/en/ari/resea...
Professor Peter Cook publishes groundbreaking new research on how pinniped brains evolved to unlock vocal plasticity in the publication Science.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Love this framing by @biotay.bsky.social - I always lead with vocal learning and then work back to breathing, but the reverse is far less cognitively frictive.
Thanks Diandra! Definitely an interesting complement to your recent behavioral work…
Many thanks! And for the repost... My pace on this one was glacial, but got there in the end.
Thanks Stephanie :-)
A harbor seal opens its mouth wide just above the water’s surface.
By mapping the brains of seals and sea lions, researchers have uncovered specialized neural circuits that have evolved to support the control of complex vocal behavior and learning in the species.
Learn more this week in Science: https://scim.ag/4bpsJYU
37/37
As Greg Berns notes: “By using these neuroimaging techniques to compare the brains of mammalian species wired to have vocal flexibility with those that are not, we might be able to build up an evolutionary tree for language.” And all with opportunistically and ethically collected brains.
36/37
My students and I are now working to replicate these findings with cetaceans - another group of marine mammals with vocal flexibility and exceptional breathing control (like harbor seals, dolphins under general anesthesia stop breathing - they need the higher brain to breathe!).
35/37
What's next? We need to figure out what, if anything, harbor seals and their relatives are DOING with vocal plasticity. What's it for? There's very limited evidence of complex communication among wild harbor seals. But they mostly vocalize at sea - we're only starting to listen.
34/37 Could this provide insight into the evolution of human language? I'm not looking to revive the aquatic ape hypothesis, but there ARE plausible anthropological theories on early hominid adaptations leading to improved volitional breathing control.
33/37 This is a recipe for building a vocally plastic brain, like humans have evolved for spoken language, and it starts with ecological pressures favoring reduced automaticity of breathing control.
