127 | Erich Jarvis on Language, Birds, and People

127 | Erich Jarvis on Language, Birds, and People

Many characteristics go into making human beings special — brain size, opposable thumbs, etc. Surely one of the most important is language, and in particular the ability to learn new sounds and use them for communication. Many other species communicate through sound, but only a very few — humans, elephants, bats, cetaceans, and a handful of bird species — learn new sounds in order to do so. Erich Jarvis has been shedding enormous light on the process of vocal learning, by studying birds and comparing them to humans. He argues that there is a particular mental circuit in the brains of parrots (for example) responsible for vocal learning, and that it corresponds to similar circuits in the human brain. This has implications for the development of intelligence and other important human characteristics.

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Erich Jarvis received his Ph.D. in Animal Behavior and Molecular Neurobehavior from Rockefeller University. He is currently a professor in the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at Rockefeller and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Among his many awards are the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation, an American Philosophical Society Award, a Packard Foundation fellowship, an NIH Director's Pioneer award, Northwestern University's Distinguished Role Model in Science award, and the Summit Award from the American Society for Association Executives.


Jaksot(416)

AMA | August 2022

AMA | August 2022

Welcome to the August 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patr...

1 Elo 20223h 6min

205 | John Quiggin on Interest Rates and the Information Economy

205 | John Quiggin on Interest Rates and the Information Economy

The idea of an "interest rate" might seem mundane and practical, in comparison to our usual topics around here, but there is a profound philosophical idea lurking in the background: if you lend me mon...

25 Heinä 20221h 19min

204 | John Asher Johnson on Hunting for Exoplanets

204 | John Asher Johnson on Hunting for Exoplanets

Recent years have seen a revolution in the study of exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the Sun (or don't orbit stars at all). After a few tentative detections in the 1990s, dedicated inst...

18 Heinä 20221h 15min

203 | N.J. Enfield on Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Not Scientists

203 | N.J. Enfield on Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Not Scientists

We describe the world using language — we can't help it. And we all know that ordinary language is an imperfect way of communicating rigorous scientific statements, but sometimes it's the best we can ...

11 Heinä 20221h 24min

AMA | July 2022

AMA | July 2022

Welcome to the July 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). I take the large number of questi...

4 Heinä 20223h 26min

202 | Andrew Papachristos on the Network Theory of Gun Violence

202 | Andrew Papachristos on the Network Theory of Gun Violence

The United States is suffering from an epidemic of tragic gun violence. While a political debate rages around the topic of gun control, it remains important to understand the causes and possible remed...

27 Kesä 20221h 15min

201 | Ed Yong on How Animals Sense the World

201 | Ed Yong on How Animals Sense the World

All of us construct models of the world, and update them on the basis of evidence brought to us by our senses. Scientists try to be more rigorous about it, but we all do it. It's natural that this pro...

20 Kesä 20221h 9min

AMA | June 2022

AMA | June 2022

Welcome to the June 2022 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! We are inaugurating a slightly different publication schedule, in which these monthly AMA will take the place of one of the regular Monda...

13 Kesä 20223h 4min

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