The Secrets of Birdsong

Emily Lambert Mackevicius is a PhD candidate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Mackevicius is studying how young zebra finches learn to sing, from protosyllables to improvisation—a process that provides insight into how humans learn to think and articulate. “Some of the brain regions involved in bird learning are also impaired in diseases like Parkinson’s and Huntington’s in humans,” explains Mackevicius. “The hope is that by studying these brain circuits and understanding them better, this could one day be translated to better treatments of these types of disorders.”