{"id":781776,"date":"2026-05-08T10:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/781776\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T10:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:50:15","slug":"a-mutation-gave-humans-the-gift-of-speech-these-mice-have-it-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/781776\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mutation Gave Humans the Gift of Speech. These Mice Have It, Too."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the balmy cloud forests of Central America, the operatic calls of Alston\u2019s singing mouse, a small, short-tailed rodent famous for its courteous communication<\/a>, can often be heard echoing through the trees.<\/p>\n

These minuscule mice, each of which weighs less than a lightbulb, sing unique, chirp-filled songs to one another that can last as long as 16 seconds. Both sonic and ultrasonic sounds flow from the mouse\u2019s mouth, creating a song reminiscent of the buzzing of a cicada. What\u2019s more, the mice never interrupt each other; they hold their tiny tongues until their conversational partner is done singing.<\/p>\n

Scientists have long wondered what enables these mice to have such uncannily complex conversations without the help of human brains. But as it turns out, our brains may not be so different.<\/p>\n

In a new study<\/a> published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers found that a simple expansion of existing neural pathways allowed these mice to broaden their vocal repertoire \u2014 the same mutation believed to have paved the way for the development of human language.<\/p>\n

By studying the brains of Alston\u2019s singing mice and their non-singing (but closely related) lab mouse cousins, researchers at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island were able to determine what evolutionary changes in the brain had given rise to the singing mouse\u2019s cordial and symphonic songs. Now, scientists are wondering if the same method can be used to figure out the neurological basis for other animal behaviors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is relevant far beyond singing mice,\u201d said Mirjam Kn\u00f6rnschild<\/a>, a behavioral ecologist who studies bioacoustics at the Museum of Natural History Berlin. Dr. Kn\u00f6rnschild, who was not involved with the study, said it could \u201cinform work on vocal turn-taking, vocal learning and vocal flexibility in other mammals, including bats, primates and humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2019, Arkarup Banerjee,<\/a> a biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and his colleagues discovered that the back-and-forth serenades of Alston\u2019s singing mice sound strikingly similar to our conversations. But at the time, he couldn\u2019t make sense of it. Dr. Banerjee had examined the brains of Alston\u2019s singing mice and non-singing lab mice, and they seemed more or less identical.<\/p>\n

Scientists once believed that complex behaviors, such as tool use and peer-to-peer communication, required specialized neural circuitry. But when Dr. Banerjee went looking for such dedicated neural hardware in Alston\u2019s singing mice, he didn\u2019t find any.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t seem like things were that different,\u201d Dr. Banerjee recalls.<\/p>\n

This prompted Dr. Banerjee and colleagues to set out in search of what gave these singing mice their vocal prowess. In their effort to find out, the researchers used a technique called Multiplexed Analysis of Projections by Sequencing, or MAPseq. This method allows scientists to map thousands of individual neurons by infecting them with a virus that delivers unique RNA bar codes into each cell. When scientists genetically sequence tissue from across the brain, the bar codes reveal a detailed map of where each neuron connects throughout the brain.<\/p>\n

When the researchers used MAPseq on the brains of dozens of mice from both species, the differences became clear. The singing mice had approximately three times the number of neurons sending signals from the motor cortex to two specific downstream regions of the brain. While that may sound like a stark difference, the scientists say it\u2019s more akin to \u201ca relatively subtle change in brain wiring,\u201d said Anthony Zador<\/a>, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

According to Dr. Zador, the fact that such subtle neural changes can result in the development of a whole new vocal behavior \u201craises interesting questions about how much rewiring was involved in the evolution of human language.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to challenging our understanding of the evolution of our most novel behavior, the findings of this study may help scientists learn more about the neurological basis for many animal behaviors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work hits on an important unanswered question in neuroscience: What gives some animals exceptional abilities that others don\u2019t have?\u201d said David Schneider<\/a>, a professor of neuroscience at New York University who was not involved with the study.<\/p>\n

Before this study, scientists had never used MAPseq to compare the brains of two closely related species with remarkably different behavior. Experts say their success in doing so has opened up a world of scientific possibilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study gives us a road map for how to think about and quantitatively test ideas about the evolution of brain structure,\u201d said Steven Phelps<\/a>, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin, who was not involved with the study.<\/p>\n

As the study came to a close, Dr. Banerjee said he couldn\u2019t get a quote from Charles Darwin\u2019s 1871 book \u201cThe Descent of Man\u201d out of his head: \u201cThe difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s increasing evidence that there may be some profound truth to this idea,\u201d Dr. Banerjee said. As his study has demonstrated, even tiny changes in the brain can have profound impacts on behavior. When you keep that in mind, he said, \u201csuddenly the development of things like language in humans doesn\u2019t seem that mysterious.\u201d<\/p>\n

A correction was made on<\/strong> May 6, 2026:<\/strong> An earlier version of this article misidentified the location of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It is on Long Island, not in upstate New York.<\/p>\n

A correction was made on<\/strong> May 7, 2026: <\/strong>An earlier version of this article misidentified the range of the Alston\u2019s singing mouse and misstated when it is active. It lives only in Central America, not in South America, and is diurnal, not nocturnal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the balmy cloud forests of Central America, the operatic calls of Alston\u2019s singing mouse, a small, short-tailed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":781777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[57207,4465,319891,10266,26921,1183,159,67,132,68,319890,311940],"class_list":{"0":"post-781776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-animal-behavior","9":"tag-brain","10":"tag-cold-spring-harbor-laboratory","11":"tag-mice","12":"tag-nature-journal","13":"tag-research","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-voice-and-speech","19":"tag-your-feed-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116538574893846643","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}