Cookies
We use essential cookies to run the site. Analytics cookies are optional and help us improve World Wide. Learn more.
Dr
Deutsche Primate Center
Showing your local timezone
Schedule
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
2:00 AM America/New_York
Domain
NeuroscienceHost
Systems Neuroecology
Duration
70 minutes
The evolution of speech is considered to be one of the hardest problems in science. Studies of the communicative abilities of our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates, aim to contribute to a better understanding of the emergence of this uniquely human capability. Following a brief introduction over the key building blocks that make up the human speech faculty, I will focus on the question of meaning in nonhuman primate vocalizations. While nonhuman primate calls may be highly context specific, thus giving rise to the notion of ‘referentiality’, comparisons across closely related species suggest that this specificity is evolved rather than learned. Yet, as in humans, the structure of calls varies with arousal and affective state, and there is some evidence for effects of sensory-motor integration in vocal production. Thus, the vocal production of nonhuman primates bears little resemblance to the symbolic and combinatorial features of human speech, while basic production mechanisms are shared. Listeners, in contrast, are able learning the meaning of new sounds. A recent study using artificial predator shows that this learning may be extremely rapid. Furthermore, listeners are able to integrate information from multiple sources to make adaptive decisions, which renders the vocal communication system as a whole relatively flexible and powerful. In conclusion, constraints at the side of vocal production, including limits in social cognition and motivation to share experiences, rather than constraints at the side of the recipient explain the differences in communicative abilities between humans and other animals.
Julia Fischer
Dr
Deutsche Primate Center
neuro
Nervous system function relies on the polarized architecture of neurons, established by directional transport of pre- and postsynaptic cargoes. While delivery of postsynaptic components depends on the
neuro
A combinatorial neural code for long-term motor memory
neuro
The postdoctoral researcher will work on an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of deep learning and comparative politics. The candidate will work in the Human-Centered Machine Learning (HuM
We are looking for highly motivated researchers to join our group in interdisciplinary projects that focus on the development of computational models to understand how linguistic information is repres
The CSNG Lab at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Charles University is seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to join our team to work on a digital twin model of the visual sy
PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Cluster headache (CH), which affects about 1 in 1,000 people, is a severe and debilitating primary headache disorder characterized by repeated attacks occurring in clusters