Timothy Wright, Ph.D. - US grants

Vocal learning has evolved in such distantly related animal groups as whales, bats, songbirds, hummingbirds and parrots. The ability to learn vocalizations may enable the development of more complex communication systems at the cost of metabolically expensive brains and extended periods of development. Examining the benefits and costs of vocal learning in a range of species will provide insights into how and why human language has evolved. One common manifestation of learning is a patchwork pattern of geographic variation termed 'dialects'. Dialects may be maintained over time either by limited movements of individuals from one dialect to another or by immigrants learning local call types after dispersal, termed 'vocal convergence'. Previous work in the yellow-naped amazon in Costa Rica has suggested that vocal convergence is important for maintaining vocal dialects in this parrot species. This project will document when, how and why birds immigrating from one dialect to another learn new call types. To better monitor movements in these wide-ranging birds, biologists and engineers at New Mexico State University (NMSU) will collaborate to develop novel telemetry methods utilizing Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Juvenile yellow-naped amazons will be fitted with the GPS tracking devices and followed for 12 months to document natural patterns of dispersal. Other birds will be moved from their natal dialect to a neighboring dialect to allow close observation of vocal learning and integration into new flocks. These experiments will provide critical data for understanding the benefits conveyed by vocal convergence in this species. In addition, NMSU will partner with the World Parrot Trust and the Area de Conservacíon Guanacaste in Costa Rica to develop an integrated parrot conservation program that includes biological education and nest protection and a website on parrot nesting behavior that features live video feeds from parrot nests. These activities will provide training and mentoring opportunities for students at NMSU, a Hispanic-serving land grant university.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): PROJECT ABSTRACT In the United States, immigrant populations suffer significant health disparities relative to the general population. Immigrants experience higher rates of some diseases and stress-related conditions, and have lower rates of access to preventative care and services. Numerous studies have identified a lack of English-speaking abilities in adult immigrants as the primary factor driving these health disparities. Improving rates of language learning by adult immigrants and their health care providers are obvious routes to reducing these disparities. Yet there are many questions regarding adult language learning, particularly in regards to the social forces that drive or inhibit learning, and the physiological and neural mechanisms that underlie learning and production. There is increasing evidence that these mechanisms are different in adults than they are in children, but songbirds, the primary animal model for vocal learning, generally do not exhibit vocal learning as adults. The proposed studies would develop the budgerigar, a small parrot, as an alternative animal model for vocal learning. Budgerigars of both sexes are capable of vocal learning as adults and individuals will readily converge to a shared group-specific contact call when moved from one social group to another. This project will utilize this vocal convergence as a behavioral assay of adult vocal learning in a series of experiments designed to test i) the effects of social context and vocal convergence on endocrine stress levels, ii) the effects of manipulated corticosterone (the primary stress hormone in birds) on learning in juveniles and adults, and iii) the role of the gene FoxP2 in learning in juveniles and adults. The first series of experiments will move individuals from one social group to another and monitor corticosterone levels to test the password hypothesis for the function of group-specific vocalizations. The second series of experiments will alter corticosterone levels at both the juvenile and adult stage to test for organizational and activational effects of corticosterone on vocal learning. The third will examine expression patterns of FoxP2, a gene implicated in vocal learning in both humans and songbirds, in the vocal learning centers of the brains of juvenile and adult budgerigars. Together, these experiments will provide novel and potentially transformative insights regarding the vocal learning process in adults and how it differs from learning in juveniles. This SC1 funding will also contribute to the professional development of the PI and enhance biomedical research at a minority serving institution. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: PROJECT NARRATIVE Immigrants in the US experience health disparities that result from a lack of English-speaking abilities. This project will examine the effects of social context and stress in an animal model for adult vocal learning, the budgerigar. It will also investigate the physiological and genetic mechanisms that underlie adult vocal learning.

When disasters occur, they can severely impact the health and disrupt the continuity of communities. Emergency operations centers (EOCs) are temporary organizations that emerge to respond to disasters by bringing together dozens of private and public organizations to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate to ensure the continuity of the community. They have primary responsibility for public safety under the guidelines of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). Yet, EOCs are rarely engaged outside of a disaster situation, so there is little empirical data to provide insight into their processes and performance to support improvements. Observational research on such events is difficult; experimental research is even more difficult. The goal of this infrastructure enhancement project is to further develop an organizational simulation of an EOC, called Ensayo, that reflects a wide variety of EOC forms. The goal of Ensayo is not to model a disaster, but to model the organization that responds to a disaster. The simulation will be based on an initial prototype and developed with the collaboration of the the Miami-Dade Office of Emergency Management and partners in its EOC. Ensayo affords not only a research tool for academics, but also a resource for education, training and policy analysis for communities of practice who engage in an emergency operations event.

Ensayo II will be a reformulation and elaboration of the Ensayo infrastructure developed with prior NSF funding, based on experiences with the earlier project. The project has four major goals. First, Ensayo II will evolve the architecture and functionality of Ensayo. Experience with Ensayo has revealed the importance of crossing disciplinary boundaries (cognitive science, human-computer interaction, computer science, organizational science, systems engineering) in order to understand, model, and support the complexities of an emergency management decision-making structure. Second, the system will incorporate new collaboration and communication elements that are now found in EOCs. For example, Miami-Dade was one of the first to formally address and integrate into their structure a business recovery function. Third, the system will support informational and decision modeling and tracking. Entities in an EOC are generally guided by specific rules of communication and authority, both from within and without. Tracking (or simulating) decisions and information flow under various organizational stressors can provide unique predictive and explanatory insights into the social dynamics of EOC structures. Finally, the project will move from a prototype to an enhanced, operational research infrastructure that can be deployed as a core, open-source project. Through Ensayo II's improved infrastructure, researchers can investigate EOC structures in situ and probe the micro-mechanisms that underlie EOC choices impacting business and society.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Complex social communication via language is a central aspect of human interactions. A key neural process underlying language is vocal learning, the ability to learn the particular sound combinations that compose a language. While most people learn their primary language(s) as children, learning of a new language as an adult does occur, particularly by foreign-born immigrants but also by recipients of cochlear implants and by stroke victims. Yet little is known about how the adult brain learns languages. Mutations in the transcription factor FoxP2 are known to be responsible for speech defects in humans. Work in the zebra finch, a songbird models for vocal learning, has suggested that the transcription factor FoxP2 plays an important role during the juvenile phase in regulating other genes that structure the neural centers for vocal learning and enhance the neural connections required for learning. Importantly, the zebra finch is capable of learning only as a juvenile, limiting its effectiveness as a model for adult vocal learning. In this SC1 project we will employ an alternative model, the budgerigar (a small parrot) that commonly learns new calls as an adult. We will use this model to investigate of the role of FoxP2 in adult vocal learning. We will use a viral vector developed for gene therapy to increase the gene expression of FoxP2 in a particular vocal learning center of budgerigars. We will then examine the resulting effects on vocal plasticity, social behavior, neuron shape and networks of gene expression. We predict that elevated FoxP2 activity will inhibit vocal plasticity and reduce or block completely the abiliy of treated birds to learn new vocalizations. Students and a postdoctoral trainee from a minority-serving institution will be involved in all aspects of the research and will receive training in cutting-edge techniques in neuroscience from a suite of highly-experienced collaborators.