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.


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119 | Musa al-Gharbi on the Value of Intellectual Diversity

119 | Musa al-Gharbi on the Value of Intellectual Diversity

In the service of seeking truth, there would seem to be value in intellectual diversity, both in keeping ourselves honest and in the possibility of new ideas coming from unexpected quarters. That's tr...

19 Loka 20201h 16min

118 | Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology

118 | Adam Riess on the Expansion of the Universe and a Crisis in Cosmology

Astronomers rocked the cosmological world with the 1998 discovery that the universe is accelerating. Well-deserved Nobel Prizes were awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt, and today's guest Adam R...

12 Loka 20201h 18min

117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution

117 | Sean B. Carroll on Randomness and the Course of Evolution

Evolution is a messy business, involving as it does selection pressures, mutations, genetic drift, and the effects of random external interventions. So in the end, how much of it is predictable, and h...

5 Loka 20201h 20min

116 | Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration

116 | Teresa Bejan on Free Speech, Civility, and Toleration

How can, and should, we talk to each other, especially to people with whom we disagree? "Free speech" is rightfully entrenched as an important value in liberal democratic societies, but implementing i...

28 Syys 20201h 43min

115 | Netta Engelhardt on Black Hole Information, Wormholes, and Quantum Gravity

115 | Netta Engelhardt on Black Hole Information, Wormholes, and Quantum Gravity

Stephen Hawking made a number of memorable contributions to physics, but perhaps his greatest was a puzzle: what happens to information that falls into a black hole? The question sits squarely at the ...

21 Syys 20201h 27min

114 | Angela Chen on Asexuality in a Sex-Preoccupied World

114 | Angela Chen on Asexuality in a Sex-Preoccupied World

Sexuality is, and always has been, a topic that is endlessly fascinating but also contentious. You might think that asexuality would be more straightforward, but you'd be wrong. Asexual people, or "ac...

14 Syys 20201h 8min

113 | Cailin O'Connor on Game Theory, Evolution, and the Origins of Unfairness

113 | Cailin O'Connor on Game Theory, Evolution, and the Origins of Unfairness

You can't always get what you want, as a wise person once said. But we do try, even when someone else wants the same thing. Our lives as people, and the evolution of other animals over time, are shape...

7 Syys 20201h 19min

112 | Fyodor Urnov on Gene Editing, CRISPR, and Human Engineering

112 | Fyodor Urnov on Gene Editing, CRISPR, and Human Engineering

Not too long ago nobody carried a mobile phone; now almost everybody does. That's the kind of rate of rapid progress we're seeing with our ability to directly edit genomes. With the use of CRISPR-Cas9...

31 Elo 20201h 20min

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