Songbirds Behave as One When Singing Together, New Study Finds

(CNN) – The singers who perform a duet, the jazz musicians who riff together effortlessly, the dancers in pairs who never fail: the great artists are so coordinated that they become one.What are the mechanisms that regulate coordination and cooperation? Neurobiologists are learning more from some of nature’s leading musical performers: songbirds.

The brains of birds that sing in duet are wired together during performances, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The exchange of auditory information between the birds “momentarily inhibits the motor circuits used for singing in the listening partner, helping to link the brains of the pair and coordinate taking turns for an apparently telepathic performance,” according to a statement from press.

It’s not telepathy, but almost, according to study co-author Eric Fortune, a neurobiologist and associate professor in the department of biological sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

“Birds that listen to each other link their brains to act as one,” he told CNN.

The male brain has expectations of what the female brain is going to do. The female brain has expectations of what the male brain is going to do. And when they start working together, they are linked, ”added Fortune.

The brain of a songbird and a trampoline

The study focuses on what happens in the brains of birds Pheugopedius euophrys, commonly known as flat-tailed wren, coliliso cockroach or soterrey colillano, a species native to the Andes region that lives in bamboo bushes, while singing in duet.

According to the study, the duos of Pheugopedius euophrys They are frantic-paced call-and-response songs, taking turns singing so fast it seems like a single bird is doing it.

Working from the laboratory at the Yanayacu Biological Station in Ecuador, right next to the active Antisana volcano, the scientists specifically investigated an area of ​​the songbird brain known to control song.

The researchers recorded the birds’ brain activity during the duets using electrodes much thinner than hair, Fortune explained. The team observed that when a bird sings, neurons have a peak of activity, but when a bird hears its partner sing, the neurons calm down.

The fact that neurons calm down is especially significant, Fortune explained.

“Often what happens is that after inhibition, there is a rebound, and that rebound can change the timing of your own behavior,” he said.

Fortune likened that effect to jumping off a trampoline: “It bounces down, it’s a little slow, but then it shoots out.”

Scientists hypothesize that releasing the inhibition could help a bird respond more quickly when it is called on to sing.

According to Fortune, there are similarities between the way birds take turns singing and the way humans sing while conversing.

“If you watch your own interactions with people, you’ll see that the other person starts talking a nanosecond after you finish saying the last word – it’s really amazing,” he said.

What humans and robots can learn from songbirds

“All the achievements of humanity are based on cooperation, that is the characteristic of humans that has allowed us to do the amazing things that we do,” said Fortune.

Learning more about how songbirds stay in sync during their singing performances can help illuminate the mechanics of coordination in humans, a complex phenomenon that involves many different types of information being exchanged between the parties.

“Many of us understand how difficult it is to dance, and in part it is because you are exchanging complex sets of information at different times: touch, vision, acoustics, you have to signal your intention, there has to be some set of variations, and it’s a real tangle”.

Songbirds, on the other hand, take turns in their duets in a more structured way, which makes it easier to analyze how the cooperation works, according to Fortune.

According to Fortune, deepening our understanding of cooperation in songbirds could also help us build better robots.

“Robots are more precise and better controlled than a human can, and yet they cannot cooperate with us,” he said.

The brains of the songbird duo are put together to create “a single control system” that encompasses two individuals, according to Fortune.

This could inspire the development of robots that can better associate with humans.

“This union of the control systems of individuals is a fundamental idea for robotics experts,” says Fortune.