A research group led by Professor Ryohei Sato of Kitasato University and former Professor Hiroko Fujiwara of the Faculty of Science, Japan Women's University (currently Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Human Arts and Sciences) discovered that Sekisei Inco has gender differences in both behavior and brain working style. Did.This study is the first report in the world of birds showing a gender difference in cerebral hemisphere dominance in a region similar to the human language field of the avian cerebrum.
In the study, males and females were artificially paired and bred for 5 weeks, then the pairing was resolved, and the voices of the spouse and non-spouse were alternately heard to compare how to respond.At that time, when examining the area called CMM, which is the higher auditory center, when the spouse's voice was heard, the left and right cerebral hemispheres showed higher activity in females than in the silent state, but in males, the spouse showed higher activity. When I heard the voice of the person, I found that the activity was increased only on the right hemisphere side of the CMM.
It is known that there are gender differences in language function in the human brain.Therefore, neurobehavioral studies of birds similar to the human sensory language field (Wernicke's field) will lead to the elucidation of the biological basis of gender differences and the lateralization mechanism of the brain found in human language function.Furthermore, elucidating the neural basis of the vocal learning mechanism of budgerigars is expected to contribute to the elucidation of the cause of higher brain dysfunction such as aphasia.
