2. Brain and Language: Insights from Songbirds Colline Poirier

3. Vocal learning Sensory: hearing the model (sensitive period) Sensory-motor: practicing + auditory feedback Maintenance: auditory feedback

4. Proto-syntax Starling song A: individual whistles B, C, D : individual warbling motifs E, F, G: click trains superimposed to individual warbling motifs H, I : speci-specific high-pitched trills

5. Spoken language Sequence of acoustically complex sounds Learned behaviour Meaningful order of sounds Referential function OK Birdsong No OK

6. Gene expression Anatomical connectivity Functionality Jarvis et al 2005, Nat Rev Neurosci Avian Brain

7. Song control system

8. Songbird & MRI

9. Own song recognition Own song selectivity in the song control system  Own song selectivity in the auditory pathway? Birdsong: support of species and individual recognition Own song selectivity: Experience-dependent mechanisms & Auditory feedback

10. Poirier et al., 2009, J. Neurosci Own song recognition

11. Lateralized own song selectivity towards the right side: Reminiscent of: song productionneural auditory feedback controlown voiceown cry own face

12. Own song recognition Own song selectivity at the midbrain level Information processing about the identity of a subject through experience-dependent mechanisms, challenging the classical perception of sub-cortical regions as primitive and non-plastic structures.

13. Brain and Language vocal learningLanguage precursors