Songbirds may help solve speech disorders

STATE COLLEGE, Pa., March 18 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they're using songbirds to gain insight into how the human brain functions, which may help treat speech disorders and related diseases.

Pennsylvania State University Assistant Professors Jin Dezhe and Alexay Kozhevnikov said they are studying how songbirds transmit impulses through nerve cells in their brains to produce a complex behavior, such as singing. Songbirds, Dezhe said, are particularly well suited for studying speech production and syntax because there are more similarities between birdsong and human speech than one might think.

"We are not only interested in birds," he said, "we are ultimately interested in studying how the human brain works and better understanding ourselves."

He said songbirds are among the few that learn to communicate sounds in a manner similar to humans, with both the speech- and song-learning processes involving similar neural mechanisms.

Kozhevnikov and Dezhe said they record brain activity that occurs in songbirds during singing. In this way, the songbird's brain acts as a laboratory for understanding neural networking.

The physicists said similarities between the neural networks in songbirds and humans makes them important for understanding the brain circuitry that underlies speech and language production. The knowledge obtained from their research, they said, can function as a bridge to address and treat speech and language disorders.

Dezhe presented the research Thursday in Portland, Ore., during the March meeting of the American Physical Society.