sitting With a friend together and chat, can be a very enjoyable affair. For the brain is the best riding of the conversation, however, is a real mammoth task: what is said must be recorded, interpreted correctly and properly – that everything be returned to you in a short period of time. How to manage, can probably help singing mice explain. US researchers describe in the journal “Science” that there is in the brain of the rodent, a Region, the downstream areas in a controlled manner. This circuit allows the typical Back and Forth of the song of mice and in a similar Form might also be a conversation among people.
test object: The “Alston’s Singing Mouse”
The Team of Daniel Okobi from New York University and had studied for their study, the songs of the brown mouse-type Scotinomys teguina – in English, “Alston’s Singing Mouse”. The rodents produce individual tones and associate them to a song. The researchers put two singing mice in separate chambers, so that the animals see, but could hear. They noted that the animals in the company of singing more often and more variable than when they are alone. They adapted to their respective contribution in the Discussion in addition to the Timing of the partner – an animal only begins to sing when the other one left off, quite similar to people in a conversation.
To find out how the brain of this Timing controls used by the researchers in various methods. They measured about the brain waves during the singing and found that Singing takes place during exhalation and with a contraction of the jaw muscles. Further studies showed that the so-called motor cortex of the brain plays in the control of a Central role. The researchers manipulated the activity of which, on hearing the rodents singing and recorded her singing and later, at the point at which they had interrupted him. The motor cortex was cooled, the speed of the song.
at least A 90-million-year-old control system
From their investigation, the researchers concluded that the brain controls graded the rodents conversations: the motor cortex provides for the appropriate Timing of the Back-and-Forth between the two animals, downstream areas are for the production of the song. This hierarchy is for the socially relevant exchange is crucial.
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Apparently, was already in control of the last common ancestor of rodents and primates – a small Mammal that lived 90 million years ago – the areas according to the formation of a higher-level control unit in the motor cortex, commented Steffen Hage of the University of Tübingen. Anja Garms (dpa)
