Researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University have discovered that humans and songbirds use markedly different strategies to recognize sequences of complex sounds. The findings shed new light on how biology and experience shape the way we perceive complex sounds, with implications for music and speech.

When people hear a familiar melody, they generally follow its pitch pattern (how high or low a sound is), even when it is played on another instrument. But do songbirds recognize sound patterns in the same way?

A new study by researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University suggests that they do not. Using a listening task in which humans and zebra finches were exposed to the same artificial sounds, the researchers found that humans attend predominantly to pitch, whereas zebra finches combine pitch with changes in the spectral structure—or formants—of these sounds. The study is published in Communications Biology.