What do mammals have to say about the neurobiology of acoustic communication?

Abstract

Auditory communication is crucial across taxa, including humans, because it enables individuals to convey information about threats, food sources, mating opportunities, and other social cues necessary for survival. Comparative approaches to auditory communication will help bridge gaps across taxa and facilitate our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying this complex task. In this work, we briefly review the field of auditory communication processing and the classical champion animal, the songbird. In addition, we discuss other mammalian species that are advancing the field. In particular, we emphasize mice and bats, highlighting the characteristics that may inform how we think about communication processing.

Keywords: auditory processing; comparative models; social communication; vocal production; vocalizations.

Figure 1.. Graphical abstract of the proposed advantages of comparative work in the field of neural circuits mediating mammalian social communication.

We define sophisticated techniques as chemogenetics, intersectional genetics, single-cell resolution connectomics, spatial transcriptomics, and computational approaches that will help bridge system neuroscience and neuroethology.

Figure 2.

Diagram showing proposed circuitry underlying vocal production in mammals.