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BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / NEUROSCIENCE
Songbirds tune their vocal tract to the fundamental frequency of their song

Tobias Riede^*,,, Roderick A. Suthers^*, Neville H. Fletcher, and William E. Blevins^¶

*School of Medicine, Jordan Hall, 1001 East Third Street, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405; Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-University of Berlin, Invalidenstrasse 43, 10115 Berlin, Germany; Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra 0200, Australia; and ^¶Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Diagnostic Imaging Section, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907

Communicated by Peter Marler, University of California, Davis, CA, February 14, 2006 (received for review July 28, 2005)

In human speech, the sound generated by the larynx is modified by articulatory movements of the upper vocal tract, which acts as a variable resonant filter concentrating energy near particular frequencies, or formants, essential in speech recognition. Despite its potential importance in vocal communication, little is known about the presence of tunable vocal tract filters in other vertebrates. The tonal quality of much birdsong, in which upper harmonics have relatively little energy, depends on filtering of the vocal source, but the nature of this filter is controversial. Current hypotheses treat the songbird vocal tract as a rigid tube with a resonance that is modulated by the end-correction of a variable beak opening. Through x-ray cinematography of singing birds, we show that birdsong is accompanied by cyclical movements of the hyoid skeleton and changes in the diameter of the cranial end of the esophagus that maintain an inverse relationship between the volume of the oropharyngeal cavity and esophagus and the song’s fundamental frequency. A computational acoustic model indicates that this song-related motor pattern tunes the major resonance of the oropharyngeal–esophageal cavity to actively track the song’s fundamental frequency.

bioacoustics | hyoid motor pattern | larynx | beak gape | vocal tract filter

Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared.

To whom correspondence should be sent at the present address: National Center for Voice and Speech, 1101 13th Street, Denver, CO 80204. E-mail: tobiasriede{at}web.de

© 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA

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