• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Birds May Dream, But What Do Those Dreams Sound Like?

April 12, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Have you ever had a conversation in your dreams? Maybe it’s just everyday chatter, maybe it’s an argument with someone, but it’d be pretty cool if we were somehow able to record it. As it happens, birds also seem to get vocal in their dreams, and a new study has been able to translate what that might sound like.

Scientists have known for a while that birds seem to dream about singing – the pattern of neurons that fire while they’re awake and singing can also be seen during sleep, as though they are practicing. Translating that pattern into what the song was, however, proved to be difficult.

Advertisement

Then, in 2018, professor of physics Gabriel Mindlin and colleagues discovered that birds also flex their vocal muscles in their sleep, in the same way they would were they belting out a tune during the day. 

We can’t hear that song though, “since the respiratory rhythm is not altered during sleep, the high-energy airflow needed to start auto-sustained oscillations in the labia [not that one, it’s part of a bird’s vocal organ] and generate sound is not produced,” the authors explain in the new study.

When the researchers identified the vocal muscle movement, they did so using a technique called electromyography. The team has now used data from this approach, with the aid of a dynamical systems model, to translate the songs in the dreams of great kiskadees.

“During the past 20 years, I’ve worked on the physics of birdsong and how to translate muscular information into song,” said Mindlin in a statement. “In this way, we can use the muscle activity patterns as time-dependent parameters of a model of birdsong production and synthesize the corresponding song.”

Advertisement

When getting into a squabble over territory, great kiskadees perform a distinct vocalization known as a “trill”, consisting of a sequence of short syllables (yep, birds have syllables too) sent out at around 10 to 20 Hz. The synthetic songs produced revealed that the kiskadees in the study appear to have been dreaming about confrontation.



“Analyzing muscular activity patterns during sleep reveals consistent activity patterns corresponding to these vocalizations: sequences of brief activation patterns occurring at a rate between 15 and 20 Hz,” the authors write.

Some might find it reassuring to know we’re not the only species that can get a bit het up in dreams, something that Mindlin seemed to resonate with. “I felt great empathy imagining that solitary bird recreating a territorial dispute in its dream,” said the researcher. “We have more in common with other species than we usually recognize.”

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal Chaos.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Factbox-Top announcements from Apple event
  2. WTO chief says trade must do more to address ‘devastating’ vaccine inequity
  3. Internet Figures Out Which Muppets Are Predators And Which Are Prey Based On Their Eyes
  4. AI Discovers New Material That Could Slash Lithium Use In Batteries

Source Link: Birds May Dream, But What Do Those Dreams Sound Like?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Earth’s First Commercial Space Station Set To Launch In 2026
  • Black Hole Moon: Rogue Planets With Weird Signatures Could Be A Sign Of Advanced Alien Life
  • World’s Largest Ephemeral Lake Set To Turn Iconic Peachy Pink After Extreme Flooding
  • Stunning New JWST Observations Give Further Evidence That Dark Matter Is A Real Substance
  • How Big Is This Spider? Study Explains Why You Might Overestimate Their Size
  • Orcas Sometimes Give Humans Presents Of Food And We Don’t Know Why
  • New Approach For Interstellar Navigation Was Tested On A Spacecraft 9 Billion Kilometers Away
  • For Only The Second Recorded Time, Two Novae Are Visible With The Naked Eye At Once
  • Long-Lost Ancient Egyptian City Ruled By Cobra Goddess Discovered In Nile Delta
  • Much Maligned Norwegian Lemming Is One Of The Newest Mammal Species On Earth
  • Where Are The Real Geographical Centers Of All The Continents?
  • New Species Of South African Rain Frog Discovered, And It’s Absolutely Fuming About It
  • Love Cheese But Hate Nightmares? Bad News, It Looks Like The Two Really Are Related
  • Project Hail Mary Trailer First Look: What Would Happen If The Sun Got Darker?
  • Newly Discovered Cell Structure Might Hold Key To Understanding Devastating Genetic Disorders
  • What Is Kakeya’s Needle Problem, And Why Do We Want To Solve It?
  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • What Happened When A New Zealand Man Fell Butt-First Onto A Powerful Air Hose
  • Ancient DNA Confirms Women’s Unexpected Status In One Of The Oldest Known Neolithic Settlements
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version