By Susan Milius
Songbird chicks’ version of baby talk doesn’t come from an immature version of the grown-up brain’s song pathway. Instead, the bird babbling arises from its own brain circuit.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/7704.jpg?resize=300%2C274&ssl=1)
MIT’s Michale Fee and his colleagues studied the pathways for bird song by disabling various parts of zebra finch brains with drugs or with surgery. The experiments show that early bird sounds are driven by a brain pathway called LMAN (for lateral magnocellular nucleus of the nidopallium), the researchers report in the May 2 Science.