Exploring the songs of mice from the cloudy forests of Costa Rica, scientists have noticed a brain chain that has the ability to guarantee the highest speed of conversation.

Males of the investigated shape, Singing Alston mouse (Scotinomys teguina), make songs with almost a hundred audible notes. They throw a challenge to rivals, take turns singing, alternating as talking people, talk to the creators of the study. Unlike this, normal laboratory mice produce ultrasonic sounds without undisputed exchanges.

In this way, a fresh study, led by researchers from the new York Institute's Medical high school, is launching a fresh neighborhood, applying a fresh mammalian model to research brain devices beyond the subsecond precision of a singing turn.

"Our work shows that the area of the brain, called the motor cortex, is important both for these mice, for example, and for people, in order to interact vocally," - says the senior Creator of the study Michael long, doctor of philosophy, associate Professor of neurology at the Medical school of the new York Institute.

"We need to understand how our brain quickly generates oral responses, using almost a hundred muscles, if we want to create fresh ways of healing for many Yankees, for whom this process did not work, often because of these diseases, as autism or traumatic actions, these are like a stroke," long talks.

Published online as the cover of Science on March 1, the study demonstrated, in fact, that along with the areas of the brain that talk muscles to do articles, separate circuits in the motor cortex make it possible to quickly start and become, which create a conversation between singing partners.

"Sharing the sound scheme of production and management, evolution has equipped the brain of the singing mice strict vocal control, which is also available in cricket exchanges, avian duets, and quite possibly in human discussion," adds co-author of the study Arcaro Banerjee, doctor of philosophy, postdoctoral scientist in the laboratory for long.

Not paying attention to the widespread distribution of singing exchanges in the natural world, he says, in neurology there are no optimal models of mammals for their study. Before the recent report, the main model for the study of this doctrine back and forth was a monkey, a Primate whose colloquial turns are important slower than human speech, and are hardly considered the result of a brisk muscle response to sensory signals (for example, motor cortical circuits).

Public The Songs Of Many

The research team noticed that S. teguina's songs - a series of articles that develop predictably as the song progresses-changed in social settings when mice had to "bend and break the songs" in order to talk. Tight Association between the song references and indications acquired with the support of electromyography, which strengthens electrical signals, when the brain generates muscle reduction, has allowed the team to qualify the business between the brain centers and muscles of the songs, while 2 mice were coordinated by their own answers.

In contrast to the results of past studies, scientists have noticed that the active "passionate point", located in the frontal part of the motor cortex in one direction - the Orofacial motor cortex or OMC - regulates the time of the song.

In order to learn the contribution of the target brain circuits in public singing, the team intervened in the cortical region of mice using a range of methods encompassing instrument, which was refreshing OMC during the songs. Long could help pioneer the cooling method in the study of the circuits of the human brain related to speech.

Called focal cooling, this is a non-dangerous method to slow the rate of vocalization without the configuration of tone, tone or duration of individual notes, the creators of the study talk. They say that the observed active division in the brain between the functions of sound generation and synchronization, this hierarchy, prepares a likely socially significant replacement.

Moving forward, scientists are already using their own mouse model to control the associated study of speech patterns in the human brain. Knowing the work that can help draw 2 brains into a conversation, they have every chance of finding processes that go awry when the disease doesn't allow communication, potentially stimulating the development of fresh ways to heal a variety of disorders.

Along with long, the creators of the study From the University of neurology of the new York Institute and the Department of otolaryngology at the new York medical Institute were co-authors of Arkarup Banerjee and Daniel Okobi Jr, and Andrew Matheson. The work was performed in collaboration with Stephen Phelps, a philosophy physician, Director of the brain, behavior and evolution Center of the Texas Institute in Austin, whose laboratory pioneered the study of singing mouse in the laboratory and field. Some of the creators are still considered members of the neural science center of the new York Institute.

This study was supported by the new York stem cell Foundation, the Simons Foundation fellowship society, and the Simons global brain collaboration.