Abstract
Vocal development is the adaptive coordination of the vocal apparatus, muscles, the nervous system, and social interaction. Here, we use a quantitative framework based on optimal control theory and Waddington's landscape metaphor to provide an integrated view of this process. With a biomechanical model of the marmoset monkey vocal apparatus and behavioral developmental data, we show that only the combination of the developing vocal tract, vocal apparatus muscles and nervous system can fully account for the patterns of vocal development. Together, these elements influence the shape of the monkeys' vocal developmental landscape, tilting, rotating or shifting it in different ways. We can thus use this framework to make quantitative predictions regarding how interfering factors or experimental perturbations can change the landscape within a species, or to explain comparative differences in vocal development across species.
Highlights
Understanding how behavior changes across development requires a systems-level understanding of the 16 interplay among an organism’s current behavioral capabilities, its changing body and changing nervous system (Byrge et al, 2014)
We present our findings related to the growth of the vocal tract and the successive additions of muscle, nervous system and social interaction to the developmental landscape
Its understanding requires the analysis of changes in the vocal apparatus, associated muscles, the nervous system and social interactions
Summary
Understanding how behavior changes across development requires a systems-level understanding of the 16 interplay among an organism’s current behavioral capabilities, its changing body and changing nervous system (Byrge et al, 2014). Using an extensive longitudinal vocal behavioral dataset from marmoset infants (Takahashi et al, 2015, 2016; Zhang and Ghazanfar, 2016), collected under two controlled contexts (brief social isolation (undirected context) and vocal interactions with a parent (directed context)), we applied optimal control principles to formulate and test the predictions of a landscape framework for vocal development This landscape shows how changes in the vocal apparatus, muscles, nervous system, and social interaction together shape the vocal developmental trajectory of an infant (Figure 1a)
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