1. Neuroscience

Vocal and locomotor coordination develops in association with arousal state

  1. Morgan L Gustison
  2. Jeremy I Borjon
  3. Daniel Y Takahashi  Is a corresponding author
  4. Asif A Ghazanfar  Is a corresponding author
  1. Princeton University, United States
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41853
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  1. Morgan L Gustison
  2. Jeremy I Borjon
  3. Daniel Y Takahashi
  4. Asif A Ghazanfar
(2019)
Vocal and locomotor coordination develops in association with arousal state
eLife 8:e41853.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41853
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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

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Morgan L Gustison

    Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  2. Jeremy I Borjon

    Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9114-3362

  3. 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.

  4. 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.
    ORCID icon "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

© 2019, Gustison et al.

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.

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  1. Morgan L Gustison
  2. Jeremy I Borjon
  3. Daniel Y Takahashi
  4. Asif A Ghazanfar
(2019)
Vocal and locomotor coordination develops in association with arousal state
eLife 8:e41853.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41853

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.41853

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