Vocal and locomotor coordination develops in association with arousal state

Abstract
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Abstract

In adult animals, movement and vocalizations are coordinated, sometimes facilitating, and at other times inhibiting, each other. What is missing is how these different domains of motor control become coordinated over the course of development. We investigated how postural-locomotor behaviors may influence vocal development, and the role played by physiological arousal during their interactions. Using infant marmoset monkeys, we densely sampled vocal, postural and locomotor behaviors and estimated arousal fluctuations from electrocardiographic measures of heart rate. We found that vocalizations matured sooner than postural and locomotor skills, and that vocal-locomotor coordination improved with age and during elevated arousal levels. These results suggest that postural-locomotor maturity is not required for vocal development to occur, and that infants gradually improve coordination between vocalizations and body movement through a process that may be facilitated by arousal level changes.

Data availability

We have uploaded our data to Dryad (doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cp75158).

The following data sets were generated

(2019) Data from: Vocal and locomotor coordination develops in association with arousal state
Dryad Digital Repository, doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cp75158.

http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cp75158

Article and author information

Author details

Morgan L Gustison

Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jeremy I Borjon

Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9114-3362
Daniel Y Takahashi

Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

For correspondence
takahashiyd@gmail.com

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Asif A Ghazanfar

Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

For correspondence
asifg@princeton.edu

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1960-7470

Funding

National Institute of Mental Health

Morgan L Gustison

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Asif A Ghazanfar

National Science Foundation

Jeremy I Borjon

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: This study was performed in strict accordance with the recommendations in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals of the National Institutes of Health. All of the animals were handled according to approved institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) protocols (#1908-18) of Princeton University.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.