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Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)

In human infants babbling is an important developmental stage of vocal plasticity to acquire maternal language. To investigate parallels in the vocal development of human infants and non-human mammals, seven key features of human babbling were defined, which are up to date only shown in bats and mar...

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Autores principales: Langehennig-Peristenidou, Alexandra, Romero-Mujalli, Daniel, Bergmann, Tjard, Scheumann, Marina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10696017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38049448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-47919-7
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author Langehennig-Peristenidou, Alexandra
Romero-Mujalli, Daniel
Bergmann, Tjard
Scheumann, Marina
author_facet Langehennig-Peristenidou, Alexandra
Romero-Mujalli, Daniel
Bergmann, Tjard
Scheumann, Marina
author_sort Langehennig-Peristenidou, Alexandra
collection PubMed
description In human infants babbling is an important developmental stage of vocal plasticity to acquire maternal language. To investigate parallels in the vocal development of human infants and non-human mammals, seven key features of human babbling were defined, which are up to date only shown in bats and marmosets. This study will explore whether these features can also be found in gray mouse lemurs by investigating how infant vocal streams gradually resemble the structure of the adult trill call, which is not present at birth. Using unsupervised clustering, we distinguished six syllable types, whose sequential order gradually reflected the adult trill. A subset of adult syllable types was produced by several infants, with the syllable production being rhythmic, repetitive, and independent of the social context. The temporal structure of the calling bouts and the tempo-spectral features of syllable types became adult-like at the age of weaning. The age-dependent changes in the acoustic parameters differed between syllable types, suggesting that they cannot solely be explained by physical maturation of the vocal apparatus. Since gray mouse lemurs exhibit five features of animal babbling, they show parallels to the vocal development of human infants, bats, and marmosets.
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spelling pubmed-106960172023-12-06 Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) Langehennig-Peristenidou, Alexandra Romero-Mujalli, Daniel Bergmann, Tjard Scheumann, Marina Sci Rep Article In human infants babbling is an important developmental stage of vocal plasticity to acquire maternal language. To investigate parallels in the vocal development of human infants and non-human mammals, seven key features of human babbling were defined, which are up to date only shown in bats and marmosets. This study will explore whether these features can also be found in gray mouse lemurs by investigating how infant vocal streams gradually resemble the structure of the adult trill call, which is not present at birth. Using unsupervised clustering, we distinguished six syllable types, whose sequential order gradually reflected the adult trill. A subset of adult syllable types was produced by several infants, with the syllable production being rhythmic, repetitive, and independent of the social context. The temporal structure of the calling bouts and the tempo-spectral features of syllable types became adult-like at the age of weaning. The age-dependent changes in the acoustic parameters differed between syllable types, suggesting that they cannot solely be explained by physical maturation of the vocal apparatus. Since gray mouse lemurs exhibit five features of animal babbling, they show parallels to the vocal development of human infants, bats, and marmosets. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10696017/ /pubmed/38049448 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-47919-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Langehennig-Peristenidou, Alexandra
Romero-Mujalli, Daniel
Bergmann, Tjard
Scheumann, Marina
Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)
title Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)
title_full Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)
title_fullStr Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)
title_full_unstemmed Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)
title_short Features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)
title_sort features of animal babbling in the vocal ontogeny of the gray mouse lemur (microcebus murinus)
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10696017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38049448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-47919-7
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