Prenatal development of neonatal vocalizations

  1. Darshana Z Narayanan
  2. Daniel Y Takahashi  Is a corresponding author
  3. Lauren M Kelly
  4. Sabina I Hlavaty
  5. Junzhou Huang
  6. Asif A Ghazanfar  Is a corresponding author
  1. Princeton University, United States
  2. The University of Texas at Arlington, United States

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

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Darshana Z Narayanan

    Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. 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.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-4972-001X
  3. Lauren M Kelly

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

    Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. 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.
  6. 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 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.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Andrew J King, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Version history

  1. Received: March 9, 2022
  2. Preprint posted: April 14, 2022 (view preprint)
  3. Accepted: July 11, 2022
  4. Accepted Manuscript published: July 26, 2022 (version 1)
  5. Version of Record published: August 19, 2022 (version 2)

Copyright

© 2022, Narayanan 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. Darshana Z Narayanan
  2. Daniel Y Takahashi
  3. Lauren M Kelly
  4. Sabina I Hlavaty
  5. Junzhou Huang
  6. Asif A Ghazanfar
(2022)
Prenatal development of neonatal vocalizations
eLife 11:e78485.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78485

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