Every year, more than 795,000 people experience having a stroke, often resulting in brain damage that impairs their ability to speak, walk, or perform tasks. Fortunately, in many cases, these abilities can be regained through physical therapy. With practice, our brains have remarkable abilities to rewire and repair themselves after damage.
Researchers in the laboratory of Carlos Lois, research professor of biology at Caltech, use small birds called zebra finches to study how brains rewire themselves to regain essential functionality after damage. In a new paper, they discover that zebra finches can reacquire the ability to sing after brain damage similar to stroke victims-but without practice.
"Imagine a pianist who suffers some kind of brain damage and is unable to play the piano," Lois says. "But one day, they wake up and can suddenly play again. Somehow, their brain was able to rewire itself and access the ability to play without any practice. This is what we found in songbirds."
The new study appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience on April 29.
Zebra finches are not born with their unique individual songs; they learn their song by listening to their father sing, and they continue to sing that same song for their whole lives. While they have an innate predisposition to learn songs, zebra finches will not learn the song of another species, even if hearing it as a young bird. In other words, the finch brain is programmed to pay attention to and copy a particular species-specific set of sounds.
