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Snowball the internet sensation is now the subject of new research!
Cognitive research on dancing cockatoos is the perfect combination of my two loves! Three, if you count the backstreet boys.
The Union Tribune article can be found here:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/scie
Cockatoo's extremely rare sense of rhythm may help explain how the brain relates to music
By Adam Loberstein
UNION-TRIBUNE
August 14, 2008
It didn't take long for Irena Schulz to realize she had something special.
Schulz is the founder and president of Bird Lovers Only, a bird rescue sanctuary in Schererville, Ind. Last August, a sulphur-crested cockatoo by the name of Snowball was relinquished to her shelter.
Snowball, however, isn't your average cockatoo. Snowball can dance. By studying the bird's movements to music, a San Diego neuroscientist is gaining insight into our response to rhythmic sounds and their ability to heal the human mind.
Schulz had seen birds bob and sway to music, “so it wasn't anything unusual when (his previous owner) said that Snowball could dance,” she said, “except for when I did see him dance.
“It wasn't just a matter of me looking at him and thinking, 'Oh, my God, this looks ridiculous.' It was a matter of feeling him getting down to the beat. He was really boogying.”
The owner had brought along a CD with Snowball's favorite song, “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys.
“The previous owner stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched the expressions on our faces when the song played,” Schulz said. “Snowball wouldn't just bob his head or sway; he actually kicked his legs way up in the air. And when he put them back down, he didn't just put them back down. He slammed them back down on my arm.”
Schulz posted a video of Snowball's dance on the Bird Lovers Only blog. “Somebody out in cyberspace took our video and put it on YouTube,” she said. “ From there, it just got sent around the world.”
Some 1,700 miles away sat Dr. Aniruddh D. Patel, Esther J. Burnham senior fellow at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. Patel had been interested in the question of whether any animals other than humans moved to the beat of music. When he saw the video of Snowball, he contacted Schulz. But he wasn't the first person to get in touch with her.
“I knew we had something here when the first phone call I got was from the Jay Leno show,” Schulz said. “It was incredible. It just – I don't mean to make a pun – but it really kind of snowballed. It just went from one show to the next.”
After Snowball made his way around the online and television worlds, Patel made a trip of his own. He was off to Indiana to study Snowball's dancing.
Rare talent
Moving rhythmically to a musical beat is a behavior found in every human culture, but it is not commonly seen in other animals, according to Patel. “It is a remarkable fact that despite decades of research in psychology and neuroscience in which animals have been trained to do elaborate tasks, there is not a single report of an animal that was trained to tap, peck or move in synchronicity with an auditory beat,” he wrote in a 2006 journal article.
Patel theorized that only certain types of brains can achieve musical beat perception and synchronization – those that are capable of complex vocal learning.
According to that hypothesis, nonhuman primates, our closest relatives, are likely to be incapable of moving in time to music, while species that exhibit vocal learning – songbirds, parrots or dolphins, for instance – would be better candidates to display this type of synchronized movement.
Patel and John Iversen, an associate fellow at The Neurosciences Institute who is an expert on rhythm processing, designed a set of experiments in which recordings of Snowball's favorite song were played at 11 different tempos, and the bird's response was videotaped.
The videotaping was conducted by Irena Schulz and her husband, Charles. People present during the sessions were careful not to sway or tap to the music to make sure Snowball wasn't reacting to human cues. The researchers sped up and slowed down the music to see if the dancing cockatoo would adjust his movements.
Then Patel and Iversen, along with Micah Bregman, a graduate student in cognitive science at the University of California San Diego, and Joanne Jao, a UCSD undergrad, analyzed the videos to see if Snowball truly stayed with the beat.
“The bottom line is that he does,” Patel said. “He's not as good as an adult, but we think he's a bit like a human child. He has his own preferences – he likes to dance to faster tempos, not so much the slower ones. That's actually something you see in children as well.”
Patel and his colleagues are writing up their findings. They plan to submit their conclusions to a journal.
Having confirmed that a nonhuman species could synchronize movement to music, Patel found himself asking a follow-up question: What can we learn from this?
“One thing that I think is quite interesting is that this connection between music and movement is very powerful in humans, and not well understood,” he said.
Patel noted that the neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” writes about how music “can sometimes help people with Parkinson's disease to move, and to keep moving as long as the music is on and has a good beat.”
Added Patel, “We don't understand why that works, but there's clearly a connection between their auditory system and their motor system.”
He's closer to understanding, though, thanks to Snowball.
“If this exists in some other animal,” Patel said, “that raises the possibility that what we learn from them could be relevant to understanding how this connection works in our own brains.
“To actually do research at the neurological level of how rhythmic sounds can drive the motor system – that could ultimately help us understand how it's helping these people and help us treat them better.”
Patel added that there's a whole social dimension of Snowball's dancing still to be explored.
“When I went out there to visit him, we did a little informal experiment where I tried dancing with him,” Patel said. “At some point, I turned my back on him just to see if he cared if we had some kind of eye contact. His owner told me he kind of stopped and looked a little puzzled like, 'What's going on?' ”
Said Schulz, “I wasn't sure if he was actually offended or if he thought, 'If you're not going to dance with me, then forget it.' He just seemed to have an attitude after (Patel) turned away from him. ... It was as if he had just lost his dance partner.”
Ultimately, the dancing ability of a nonhuman animal may shed light on how our brains evolved their capacity to respond to music.
“When you think about moving to a beat, it's another example of connecting up what you hear with what you do with your body,” Patel said. “It's movement connected to sound.
“The hypothesis is that maybe that's the foundation for this ability in the brain and evolution – having the ability to connect our hearing with our motor system in this very tight way lays the foundation for moving to a beat.”
Inspired by Snowball, the bird-lovers' Web site birdchannel.com is hosting what it bills as “The World's First Bird Dance-Off,” featuring video clips submitted by bird owners who think their pets can dance. Visit the Web site to see the finalists.
Patel said that he's looking for a local bird that moves to the beat of music. People who think they have such an animal should contact him at apatel@nsi.edu.
Cognitive research on dancing cockatoos is the perfect combination of my two loves! Three, if you count the backstreet boys.
The Union Tribune article can be found here:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/scie
Cockatoo's extremely rare sense of rhythm may help explain how the brain relates to music
By Adam Loberstein
UNION-TRIBUNE
August 14, 2008
It didn't take long for Irena Schulz to realize she had something special.
Schulz is the founder and president of Bird Lovers Only, a bird rescue sanctuary in Schererville, Ind. Last August, a sulphur-crested cockatoo by the name of Snowball was relinquished to her shelter.
Snowball, however, isn't your average cockatoo. Snowball can dance. By studying the bird's movements to music, a San Diego neuroscientist is gaining insight into our response to rhythmic sounds and their ability to heal the human mind.
Schulz had seen birds bob and sway to music, “so it wasn't anything unusual when (his previous owner) said that Snowball could dance,” she said, “except for when I did see him dance.
“It wasn't just a matter of me looking at him and thinking, 'Oh, my God, this looks ridiculous.' It was a matter of feeling him getting down to the beat. He was really boogying.”
The owner had brought along a CD with Snowball's favorite song, “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys.
“The previous owner stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched the expressions on our faces when the song played,” Schulz said. “Snowball wouldn't just bob his head or sway; he actually kicked his legs way up in the air. And when he put them back down, he didn't just put them back down. He slammed them back down on my arm.”
Schulz posted a video of Snowball's dance on the Bird Lovers Only blog. “Somebody out in cyberspace took our video and put it on YouTube,” she said. “ From there, it just got sent around the world.”
Some 1,700 miles away sat Dr. Aniruddh D. Patel, Esther J. Burnham senior fellow at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. Patel had been interested in the question of whether any animals other than humans moved to the beat of music. When he saw the video of Snowball, he contacted Schulz. But he wasn't the first person to get in touch with her.
“I knew we had something here when the first phone call I got was from the Jay Leno show,” Schulz said. “It was incredible. It just – I don't mean to make a pun – but it really kind of snowballed. It just went from one show to the next.”
After Snowball made his way around the online and television worlds, Patel made a trip of his own. He was off to Indiana to study Snowball's dancing.
Rare talent
Moving rhythmically to a musical beat is a behavior found in every human culture, but it is not commonly seen in other animals, according to Patel. “It is a remarkable fact that despite decades of research in psychology and neuroscience in which animals have been trained to do elaborate tasks, there is not a single report of an animal that was trained to tap, peck or move in synchronicity with an auditory beat,” he wrote in a 2006 journal article.
Patel theorized that only certain types of brains can achieve musical beat perception and synchronization – those that are capable of complex vocal learning.
According to that hypothesis, nonhuman primates, our closest relatives, are likely to be incapable of moving in time to music, while species that exhibit vocal learning – songbirds, parrots or dolphins, for instance – would be better candidates to display this type of synchronized movement.
Patel and John Iversen, an associate fellow at The Neurosciences Institute who is an expert on rhythm processing, designed a set of experiments in which recordings of Snowball's favorite song were played at 11 different tempos, and the bird's response was videotaped.
The videotaping was conducted by Irena Schulz and her husband, Charles. People present during the sessions were careful not to sway or tap to the music to make sure Snowball wasn't reacting to human cues. The researchers sped up and slowed down the music to see if the dancing cockatoo would adjust his movements.
Then Patel and Iversen, along with Micah Bregman, a graduate student in cognitive science at the University of California San Diego, and Joanne Jao, a UCSD undergrad, analyzed the videos to see if Snowball truly stayed with the beat.
“The bottom line is that he does,” Patel said. “He's not as good as an adult, but we think he's a bit like a human child. He has his own preferences – he likes to dance to faster tempos, not so much the slower ones. That's actually something you see in children as well.”
Patel and his colleagues are writing up their findings. They plan to submit their conclusions to a journal.
Having confirmed that a nonhuman species could synchronize movement to music, Patel found himself asking a follow-up question: What can we learn from this?
“One thing that I think is quite interesting is that this connection between music and movement is very powerful in humans, and not well understood,” he said.
Patel noted that the neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his book “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain,” writes about how music “can sometimes help people with Parkinson's disease to move, and to keep moving as long as the music is on and has a good beat.”
Added Patel, “We don't understand why that works, but there's clearly a connection between their auditory system and their motor system.”
He's closer to understanding, though, thanks to Snowball.
“If this exists in some other animal,” Patel said, “that raises the possibility that what we learn from them could be relevant to understanding how this connection works in our own brains.
“To actually do research at the neurological level of how rhythmic sounds can drive the motor system – that could ultimately help us understand how it's helping these people and help us treat them better.”
Patel added that there's a whole social dimension of Snowball's dancing still to be explored.
“When I went out there to visit him, we did a little informal experiment where I tried dancing with him,” Patel said. “At some point, I turned my back on him just to see if he cared if we had some kind of eye contact. His owner told me he kind of stopped and looked a little puzzled like, 'What's going on?' ”
Said Schulz, “I wasn't sure if he was actually offended or if he thought, 'If you're not going to dance with me, then forget it.' He just seemed to have an attitude after (Patel) turned away from him. ... It was as if he had just lost his dance partner.”
Ultimately, the dancing ability of a nonhuman animal may shed light on how our brains evolved their capacity to respond to music.
“When you think about moving to a beat, it's another example of connecting up what you hear with what you do with your body,” Patel said. “It's movement connected to sound.
“The hypothesis is that maybe that's the foundation for this ability in the brain and evolution – having the ability to connect our hearing with our motor system in this very tight way lays the foundation for moving to a beat.”
Inspired by Snowball, the bird-lovers' Web site birdchannel.com is hosting what it bills as “The World's First Bird Dance-Off,” featuring video clips submitted by bird owners who think their pets can dance. Visit the Web site to see the finalists.
Patel said that he's looking for a local bird that moves to the beat of music. People who think they have such an animal should contact him at apatel@nsi.edu.