Topic: Taenopygia guttata

Autism spectrum disorder impacts various aspects of the behavioral phenotype. Even in highly functioning autistic patients, the domains most affected include social behavior, behavioral flexibility, and linguistic development. While the first two are relatively easy to model in laboratory rodents, vocal learning is not within their behavioral repertoire. Conversely, songbirds, such as the zebra finch (Taenopygia guttata), develop their vocal communication (song) through social learning, making them a potentially valuable model for human speech development. Zebra finches, highly social colonial