{"id":212863,"date":"2025-04-30T09:18:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T14:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/clustered-neurons-in-bat-midbrain-encode-categories-of-vocalizations-study-finds"},"modified":"2025-04-30T09:18:05","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T14:18:05","slug":"clustered-neurons-in-bat-midbrain-encode-categories-of-vocalizations-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/clustered-neurons-in-bat-midbrain-encode-categories-of-vocalizations-study-finds","title":{"rendered":"Clustered neurons in bat midbrain encode categories of vocalizations, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/clustered-neurons-in-bat-midbrain-encode-categories-of-vocalizations-study-finds2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The ability to quickly recognize sounds, particularly the vocalizations made by other animals, is known to contribute to the survival of a wide range of species. This ability is supported by a process known as categorical perception, which entails the transformation of continuous auditory input (e.g., gradual changes in pitch or tone) into distinct categories (i.e., vocalizations that mean something specific).<\/p>\n<p>Various past studies have tried to shed light on the neural underpinnings of categorical perception and the categorization of vocalizations. While they broadly identified some <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/brain+regions\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">brain regions<\/a> that could play a part in these abilities, the precise processes through which animals categorize their peer\u2019s categorizations have not yet been fully elucidated.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently carried out a study investigating how vocalizations are represented in the brain of big brown bats, which are scientifically known as Eptesicus fuscus. Their findings, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41593-025-01932-3\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Neuroscience<\/i>, suggest that the categories of vocalizations are encoded in the bat midbrain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ability to quickly recognize sounds, particularly the vocalizations made by other animals, is known to contribute to the survival of a wide range of species. This ability is supported by a process known as categorical perception, which entails the transformation of continuous auditory input (e.g., gradual changes in pitch or tone) into distinct categories [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}