ArticlePLoS biology2019
Volitional control of vocalizations in corvid songbirds.
Article in PLoS biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Differences in Anticholinergic Exposure Assessment Across Burden Scales and Exposure Measures in a Population-Based Study: Implications for Targeted Deprescribing in Older Adults.Drugs & aging · 2026Article
- Editorial: vocal communication in corvids.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Investigating Menzerath's law in crows and humans during cued vocal 'counting'.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Rooks (Corvus frugilegus) can show spontaneous vocal flexibility when exposed to dynamically changing rhythmic sounds.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Challenges and new opportunities in deciphering the meaning of corvid call sequences.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Vocal mimicry in Corvids.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- Categorical and semantic perception of the meaning of call types in zebra finches.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Can an old rook learn new tricks? Vocal command comprehension and obedience in rooks (Corvus frugilegus).Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Vocal efficiency in crows.Animal cognition · 2025Article
- Exploring Neural Dynamics in the Auditory Telencephalon of Crows Using Functional Ultrasound Imaging.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Context-dependent modulations in zebra finch distance calls revealed by a novel goal-directed vocalization paradigm.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Exploring Anatomical Links Between the Crow's Nidopallium Caudolaterale and Its Song System.The Journal of comparative neurology · 2025Article
- Goal-directed vocal planning in a songbird.eLife · 2024Article
- Goal-directed and flexible modulation of syllable sequence within birdsong.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Spontaneous vocal coordination of vocalizations to water noise in rooks (Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Recursive sequence generation in crows.Science advances · 2022Article
- Cognitive control of song production by humpback whales.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- A Theoretical Framework for Human and Nonhuman Vocal Interaction.Annual review of neuroscience · 2022Review
- The multi-dimensional nature of vocal learning.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Songbirds are renowned for their acoustically elaborate songs. However, it is unclear whether songbirds can cognitively control their vocal output. Here, we show that crows, songbirds of the corvid family, can be trained to exert control over their vocalizations. In a detection task, three male carrion crows rapidly learned to emit vocalizations in response to a visual cue with no inherent meaning (go trials) and to withhold vocalizations in response to another cue (catch trials). Two of these crows were then trained on a go/nogo task, with the cue colors reversed, in addition to being rewarded for withholding vocalizations to yet another cue (nogo trials). Vocalizations in response to the detection of the go cue were temporally precise and highly reliable in all three crows. Crows also quickly learned to withhold vocal output in nogo trials, showing that vocalizations were not produced by an anticipation of a food reward in correct trials. The results demonstrate that corvids can volitionally control the release and onset of their vocalizations, suggesting that songbird vocalizations are under cognitive control and can be decoupled from affective states.
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