ADDING a virtual brain to a computer model of a singing bird has allowed scientists to figure out how birds compose their songs. The feat hints that we might one day be able to map some of the complex circuitry in an animal’s brain just by listening to its calls.
When birds sing, they force air from their lungs past folds of tissue in the voice box. Just over a year ago, scientists at Rockefeller University in New York and the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina reported that they had developed a simple computer model that mimics this process…
