让沉睡的鸟儿歌唱

Zebra finch

斑胸草雀。

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有时,解决问题的最好方法是睡一觉。这种方法似乎不仅被人类采用,也被鸣禽采用。事实上,根据周五发表在《科学》杂志上的一份报告,斑胸草雀可能非常依赖睡眠来排练它们的歌曲。

芝加哥大学的 Amish S. Dave 和 Daniel Margoliash 着手研究鸣禽运动活动和听觉反馈之间的关系,他们在白天鸟类唱歌时研究了斑胸草雀前脑中的神经元。然后,他们观察了这些生物在睡觉并暴露于它们歌曲录音时相同的神经元。他们发现了一种惊人相似的模式。研究人员表示,这种相似性表明,鸟类会将它们听到的歌曲存档,并在打盹时“离线”练习。

他们在报告中写道:“我们对睡眠研究期间感觉运动模式的神经元重放的观察,与海马体研究的数据一致,这些数据表明睡眠对于巩固空间记忆的神经元时间码非常重要。”

Kate Wong is an award-winning science writer and senior editor at 大众科学 focused on evolution, ecology, anthropology, archaeology, paleontology and animal behavior. She is fascinated by human origins, which she has covered for more than 25 years. Recently she has become obsessed with birds. Her reporting has taken her to caves in France and Croatia that Neandertals once called home, to the shores of Kenya's Lake Turkana in search of the oldest stone tools in the world, to Madagascar on an expedition to unearth ancient mammals and dinosaurs, to the icy waters of Antarctica, where humpback whales feast on krill, and on a "Big Day" race around the state of Connecticut to find as many bird species as possible in 24 hours. Kate is co-author, with Donald Johanson, of Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins. She holds a bachelor of science degree in biological anthropology and zoology from the University of Michigan. Follow Wong on X (formerly Twitter) @katewong

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