Andrea Ravignani

Sealcentre Pieterburen · Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Comparative pattern learning experiments investigate how different species find regularities in sensory input, providing insights into cognitive processing in humans and other animals. Past research has focused either on one species' ability to process pattern classes or different species' performance in recognizing the same pattern, with little at...

Ackermann et al.’s arguments in the target article need sharpening and rethinking at both mechanistic and evolutionary levels. First, the authors’ evolutionary arguments are inconsistent with recent evidence concerning nonhuman animal rhythmic abilities. Second, prosodic intonation conveys much more complex linguistic information than mere emotiona...

A central goal of biomusicology is to understand the biological basis of human musicality. One approach to this problem has been to compare core components of human musicality (relative pitch perception, entrainment, etc.) with similar capacities in other animal species. Here we extend and clarify this comparative approach with respect to rhythm. F...

Cumulative tool-based culture underwrote our species' evolutionary success, and tool-based nut-cracking is one of the strongest candidates for cultural transmission in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. However the social learning processes that may explain both the similarities and differences between the species remain unclear. A previous study...

Sensitivity to dependencies (correspondences between distant items) in sensory stimuli plays a crucial role in human music and language. Here, we show that squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) can detect abstract, non-adjacent dependencies in auditory stimuli. Monkeys discriminated between tone sequences containing a dependency and those lacking it,...

Background Which mammals show vocal learning abilities, e.g., can learn new sounds, or learn to use sounds in new contexts? Vocal usage and comprehension learning are submodules of vocal learning. Specifically, vocal usage learning is the ability to learn to use a vocalization in a new context; vocal comprehension learning is the ability to compreh...

Sound and movement are entangled in animal communication. This is obviously true in the case of sound-constituting vibratory movements of biological structures which generate acoustic waves. A little less obvious is that other moving structures produce the energy required to sustain these vibrations. In many species, the respiratory system moves to...

Several animal species prefer consonant over dissonant sounds, a building block of musical scales and harmony. Could consonance and dissonance be linked, beyond music, to the emotional valence of vocalizations? We extracted the fundamental frequency from calls of young chickens with either positive or negative emotional valence, i.e. contact, brood...

Why are some individuals more musical than others? Neither cognitive testing nor classical localizationist neuroscience alone can provide a complete answer. Here, we test how the interplay of brain network organization and cognitive function delivers graded perceptual abilities in a distinctively human capacity. We analyze multimodal magnetic reson...

Formants, or resonance frequencies of the upper vocal tract, are an essential part of acoustic communication. Articulatory gestures—such as jaw, tongue, lip, and soft palate movements—shape formant structure in human vocalizations, but little is known about how nonhuman mammals use those gestures to modify formant frequencies. Here, we report a cas...

Animal songs differ from calls in function and structure, and have comparative and translational value, showing similarities to human music. Rhythm in music is often distributed in quantized classes of intervals known as rhythmic categories. These classes have been found in the songs of a few nonhuman species but never in their calls. Are rhythmic...

Biological structures are defined by rigid elements, such as bones, and elastic elements, like muscles and membranes. Computer vision advances have enabled automatic tracking of moving animal skeletal poses. Such developments provide insights into complex time-varying dynamics of biological motion. Conversely, the elastic soft-tissues of organisms,...

The evolution of music, language, and cooperation have been debated since before Darwin. The social bonding hypothesis proposes that these phenomena may be interlinked: musicality may have facilitated the evolution of group cooperation beyond the possibilities of spoken language. Although dozens of experimental studies have shown that synchronised...

Research on language evolution is an established subject area yet permeated by terminological controversies about which topics should be considered pertinent to the field and which not. By consequence, scholars focusing on language evolution struggle in providing precise demarcations of the discipline, where even the very central notions of evoluti...

While rhythm can facilitate and enhance many aspects of behavior, its evolutionary trajectory in vocal communication systems remains enigmatic. We can trace evolutionary processes by investigating rhythmic abilities in different species, but research to date has largely focused on songbirds and primates. We present evidence that cetaceans—whales, d...

Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conve...

Why are some humans more musical than others? Neither fully cognitive testing nor classical localizationist neuroscience alone can provide the whole picture. Here we test how the interplay of brain organization and cognitive function delivers graded perceptual abilities in a distinctively human capacity. Our network-based study tests how human conn...

thebeat is a Python package for working with temporal sequences and rhythms in the behavioral and cognitive sciences, as well as in bioacoustics. It provides functionality for creating experimental stimuli, and for visualizing and analyzing temporal data. Sequences, sounds, and experimental trials can be generated using single lines of code. thebea...

Recursive procedures that allow placing a vocal signal inside another of a similar kind provide a neuro-computational blueprint for syntax and phonology in spoken language and human song. There are, however, no known vocal sequences among nonhuman primates arranged in self-embedded patterns that evince vocal recursion or potential incipient or evol...

Tail wagging is a conspicuous behaviour in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Despite how much meaning humans attribute to this display, its quantitative description and evolutionary history are rarely studied. We summarize what is known about the mechanism, ontogeny, function and evolution of this behaviour. We suggest two hypotheses to explain its...

Recursive procedures that allow placing a vocal signal inside another of similar kind provide a neuro-computational blueprint for syntax and phonology in spoken language and human song. There are, however, no known vocal sequences among nonhuman primates arranged in self-embedded patterns that evince vocal recursion or potential insipient or evolut...

Biological structures are defined by elements like bones and cartilage, and elastic elements like muscles and membranes. Computer vision advances have enabled automatic tracking of moving animal skeletal poses. Such developments put us on the verge of gaining insights in complex dynamics otherwise studied in more static terms (e.g., images). Howeve...

To communicate, an animal's strategic timing of rhythmic signals is crucial. Evolutionary, game-theoretical, and dynamical systems models can shed light on the interaction between individuals and the associated costs and benefits of signalling at a specific time. Mathematical models that study rhythmic interactions from a strategic or evolutionary...

Siamangs (Symphalangus syndactylus), one of the few singing apes, vocalize loudly, often while they move. We hypothesize that movement and vocalization coordinate, possibly due to vigorous thorax-loading movements such as brachiation affecting vocal-respiratory dynamics. To assess this vocal-motor coordination we recorded more than a hundred stereo...

Recursive procedures that allow placing a vocal signal inside another of similar kind provide a neuro-computational blueprint for syntax and phonology in spoken language and human song. There are, however, no known vocal patterns among nonhuman primates arranged in self-embedded combinations that evince vocal recursion or potential insipient forms...

Recursive procedures that allow placing a vocal signal inside another of similar kind provide a neuro-computational blueprint for syntax and phonology in spoken language and human song. There are, however, no known vocal patterns among nonhuman primates arranged in self-embedded combinations that evince vocal recursion or potential insipient forms...

Objective: Researchers in animal cognition, psychophysics, and experimental psychology need to randomise the presentation order of trials in experimental sessions. In many paradigms, for each trial, one of two responses can be correct, and the trials need to be ordered such that the participant's responses are a fair assessment of their performanc...

The search for common characteristics between the musical abilities of humans and other animal species is still taking its first steps. One of the most promising aspects from a comparative point of view is the analysis of rhythmic components, which are crucial features of human communicative performance, but also well-identifiable patterns in the v...

Sociality and timing are tightly interrelated in human interaction as seen in turn-taking or synchronised dance movements. Sociality and timing also show in communicative acts of other species that might be pleasurable, but also necessary for survival. Sociality and timing often co-occur, but their shared phylogenetic trajectory is unknown: How, wh...

Learning can occur via trial and error; however, learning from conspecifics is faster and more efficient. Social animals can easily learn from conspecifics, but how do less social species learn? In particular, birds provide astonishing examples of social learning of vocalizations, while vocal learning from conspecifics is much less understood in ma...

Interdisciplinary essays on music psychology that integrate scientific, humanistic, and artistic ways of knowing in transformative ways. Researchers using scientific methods and approaches to advance our understanding of music and musicality have not yet grappled with some of the perils that humanistic fields concentrating on music have long articu...

Rhythmicity in the millisecond to second range is a fundamental building block of communication and coordinated movement. But how widespread are rhythmic capacities across species, and how did they evolve under different environmental pressures? Comparative research is necessary to answer these questions but has been hindered by limited crosstalk a...

Recursive procedures that allow placing a vocal signal inside another of similar kind provide a neuro-computational blueprint for syntax and phonology in spoken language and human song. There are, however, no known vocal patterns among nonhuman primates arranged in self-embedded combinations that evince vocal recursion or potential insipient forms...

Studies of rhythm processing and of reward have progressed separately, with little connection between the two. However, consistent links between rhythm and reward are beginning to surface, with research suggesting that synchronization to rhythm is rewarding, and that this rewarding element may in turn also boost this synchronization. The current mi...

Rhythmic patterns in interactive contexts characterize human behaviours such as conversational turn-taking. These timed patterns are also present in other animals, and often described as rhythm. Understanding fine-grained temporal adjustments in interaction requires complementary quantitative methodologies. Here, we showcase how vocal interactive r...

Toothed whales evolved a third way of making sounds similar to that of land mammals and birds.

The ability to control one's vocal production is a major advantage in acoustic communication. Yet, not all species have the same level of control over their vocal output. Several bird species can interrupt their song upon hearing an external stimulus, but there is no evidence how flexible this behavior is. Most research on corvids focuses on their...

Music and language are both forms of communication ubiquitously observed across human societies, prompting researchers to investigate why and how they evolved. While such research initially focused on the biological evolution of the capacities to create and perceive language and music, researchers increasingly emphasize the cultural evolution of la...

The intergenerational stability of auditory symbolic systems, such as music, is thought to rely on brain processes that allow the faithful transmission of complex sounds. Little is known about the functional and structural aspects of the human brain which support this ability, with a few studies pointing to the bilateral organization of auditory ne...

Diandra Duengen and colleagues introduce Hoover, a male harbor seal famous for his imitation of human speech.

How did rhythm originate in humans, and other species? One cross-cultural universal, frequently found in human music, is isochrony: when note onsets repeat regularly like the ticking of a clock. Another universal consists in synchrony (e.g. when individuals coordinate their notes so that they are sung at the same time). An approach to biomusicology...

The field of bioacoustics is rapidly developing and characterized by diverse methodologies, approaches and aims. For instance, bioacoustics encompasses studies on the perception of pure tones in meticulously controlled laboratory settings, documentation of species’ presence and activities using recordings from the field, and analyses of circadian c...

Learning can occur via trial and error; however, learning from conspecifics is faster and more efficient. Social animals can easily learn from conspecifics, but how do less social species learn? In particular, avian species provide astonishing examples of social learning of vocalizations, while vocal learning from conspecifics is much less understo...

Rhythm and vocal production learning are building blocks of human music and speech. Vocal learning has been hypothesized as a prerequisite for rhythmic capacities. Yet, no mammalian vocal learner but humans have shown the capacity to flexibly and spontaneously discriminate rhythmic patterns. Here we tested untrained rhythm discrimination in a mamma...

Since the discovery that rhythmic abilities are universal in humans, temporal features of vocal communication have greatly interested researchers studying animal communication. Rhythmic patterns are a valuable tool for species discrimination, mate choice, and individual recognition. A recent study showed that bird songs and human music share rhythm...

A comparative perspective aiming to unravel the biological roots of rhythm relies on detecting the shared features between human music and other primate vocalizations and identifying the selective pressures shaping them. For example, one universal of music characterizing all human cultures is categorical rhythms. Categorical rhythms occur when the...

No PDF available ABSTRACT The presence of vocal learning and rhythm capacities in only a few mammals drives a cross-species hypothesis in evolutionary neuroscience: vocal learning and rhythm perception and synchronization may be causally related. Harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) are among these mammals, and their puppyhood is the most active vocal per...

In the last 20 years, research on turn-taking and duetting has flourished in at least three, historically separate disciplines: animal behavior, language sciences, and music cognition. While different in scope and methods, all three ultimately share one goal—namely the understanding of timed interactions among conspecifics. In this perspective, we...

Acoustic allometry occurs when features of animal vocalisations can be predicted from body size measurements. Despite this being considered the norm, allometry sometimes breaks, resulting in species sounding smaller or larger than expected for their size. A recent hypothesis suggests that allometry-breaking mammals cluster into two groups: those wi...

No PDF available ABSTRACT As collected datasets become larger and computational analyses become ever more complex, the efficient processing of bioacoustical data is a crucial problem to tackle. Often, during data exploration and analysis, different research software packages need to be flexibly combined in a script. A typical example of such a mult...

No PDF available ABSTRACT Every empirical research project includes bottlenecks at various levels. In bioacoustics, one of these time-consuming bottlenecks corresponds to the step of transforming a long stream of audio into acoustic properties of specific sounds. Here, we describe a data-extraction pipeline which integrates manual annotation with P...

The ability to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar calls may play a key role in pinnipeds' communication and survival, as in the case of mother-pup interactions. Vocal discrimination abilities have been suggested to be more developed in pinniped species with the highest selective pressure such as the otariids; yet, in some groupliving phoc...

Vocal production learning (VPL) is the experience-driven ability to produce novel vocal signals through imitation or modification of existing vocalizations. A parallel strand of research investigates acoustic allometry, namely how information about body size is conveyed by acoustic signals. Recently, we proposed that deviation from acoustic allomet...

Vocal plasticity can occur in response to environmental and biological factors, including conspecifics' vocalizations and noise. Pinnipeds are one of the few mammalian groups capable of vocal learning, and are therefore relevant to understanding the evolution of vocal plasticity in humans and other animals. Here, we investigate the vocal plasticity...

Acoustic allometry occurs when features of animal vocalisations can be predicted from body size measurements. Despite this being considered the norm, allometry sometimes breaks, resulting in species sounding smaller or larger than expected. A recent hypothesis suggests that allometry-breaking animals cluster into two groups: those with anatomical a...

What are the origins of musical rhythm? One approach to the biology and evolution of music consists in finding common musical traits across species. These similarities allow biomusicologists to infer when and how musical traits appeared in our species¹. A parallel approach to the biology and evolution of music focuses on finding statistical univers...

A cross-species perspective can extend and provide testable predictions for Savage et al.'s framework. Rhythm and melody, I argue, could bootstrap each other in the evolution of musicality. Isochrony may function as a temporal grid to support rehearsing and learning modulated, pitched vocalizations. Once this melodic plasticity is acquired, focus c...

Comparative animal studies of complex behavioural traits, and their neurobiological underpinnings, can increase our understanding of their evolution, including in humans. Vocal learning, a potential precursor to human speech, is one such trait. Mammalian vocal learning is under-studied: most research has either focused on vocal learning in songbird...

This review paper discusses rhythmic interactions and distinguishes them from non-rhythmic interactions. We report on communicative behaviours in social and sexual contexts, as found in dyads of humans, non-human primates, non-primate mammals, birds, anurans and insects. We discuss observed instances of rhythm in dyadic interactions, identify knowl...

This theme issue assembles current studies that ask how and why precise synchronization and related forms of rhythm interaction are expressed in a wide range of behaviour. The studies cover human activity, with an emphasis on music, and social behaviour, reproduction and communication in non-human animals. In most cases, the temporally aligned rhyt...

The development of rhythmicity is foundational to communicative and social behaviours in humans and many other species, and mechanisms of synchrony could be conserved across species. The goal of the current paper is to explore evolutionary hypotheses linking vocal learning and beat synchronization through genomic approaches, testing the prediction...

To understand why music is structured the way it is, we need an explanation that accounts for both the universality and variability found in musical traditions. Here we test whether statistical universals that have been identified for melodic structures in music can emerge as a result of cultural adaptation to human biases through iterated learning...

This review paper discusses rhythmic interactions and distinguishes them from non-rhythmic interactions. We report on communicative behaviours in social and sexual contexts, as found in dyads of humans, non-human primates, non-primate mammals, birds, anurans and insects. We discuss observed instances of rhythm in dyadic interactions, identify knowl...

Vocal plasticity can occur in response to environmental and biological factors, including conspecifics' vocalisations and noise. Pinnipeds are one of the few mammalian groups capable of vocal learning, and are therefore relevant to understanding the evolution of vocal plasticity in humans and other animals. Here, we investigate the vocal plasticity...

How music and speech evolved is a mystery. Several hypotheses on their origins, including one on their joint origins, have been put forward but rarely tested. Here we report and comment on the first experiment testing the hypothesis that speech and music bifurcated from a common system. We highlight strengths of the reported experiment, point out i...

Dance is ubiquitous among humans and has received attention from several disciplines. Ethnographic documentation suggests that dance has a signaling function in social interaction. It can influence mate preferences and facilitate social bonds. Research has provided insights into the proximate mechanisms of dance, individually or when dancing with p...

Comparative studies of vocal learning and vocal non-learning animals can increase our understanding of the neurobiology and evolution of vocal learning and human speech. Mammalian vocal learning is understudied: most research has either focused on vocal learning in songbirds or its absence in non-human primates. Here we focus on a highly promising...