By Susan Milius
No matter how off-key you might be, you’re still singing like a nightingale. Or a fish.
Studies of the nervous systems of larval toadfish have revealed brain circuitry similar to that controlling the vocal muscles in frogs, birds and mammals, says Andrew H. Bass of CornellUniversity.
Vertebrates croak, sing, ribbit and roar using very different muscles. But Bass and his colleagues propose that a basic network of the nerves setting the rhythms and orchestrating those muscles originates in the same area of the brain and spinal column.