Prenatal development of neonatal vocalizations

Abstract
Data availability
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Abstract

Human and non-human primates produce rhythmical sounds as soon as they are born. These early vocalizations are important for soliciting the attention of caregivers. How they develop, remains a mystery. The orofacial movements necessary for producing these vocalizations have distinct spatiotemporal signatures. Therefore, their development could potentially be tracked over the course of prenatal life. We densely and longitudinally sampled fetal head and orofacial movements in marmoset monkeys using ultrasound imaging. We show that orofacial movements necessary for producing rhythmical vocalizations differentiate from a larger movement pattern that includes the entire head. We also show that signature features of marmoset infant contact calls emerge prenatally as a distinct pattern of orofacial movements. Our results establish that aspects of the sensorimotor development necessary for vocalizing occur prenatally, even before the production of sound.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are available on DRYAD.https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m905qfv1x

The following data sets were generated

1. Ghazanfar AA
2. et al
(2022) Data from: Prenatal development of neonatal vocalizations
Dryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.m905qfv1x.

https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m905qfv1x

Article and author information

Author details

Darshana Z Narayanan

Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
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.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4972-001X
Lauren M Kelly

Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Sabina I Hlavaty

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Junzhou Huang

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, United States

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 Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS054898)

Asif A Ghazanfar

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.