title: Vocal development in a Waddington landscape.
abstract: Vocal development is the adaptive coordination of the vocal apparatus, muscles, the nervous system, and social interaction. Here, we use a quantitative framework based on optimal control theory and Waddington's landscape metaphor to provide an integrated view of this process. With a biomechanical model of the marmoset monkey vocal apparatus and behavioral developmental data, we show that only the combination of the developing vocal tract, vocal apparatus muscles and nervous system can fully account for the patterns of vocal development. Together, these elements influence the shape of the monkeys' vocal developmental landscape, tilting, rotating or shifting it in different ways. We can thus use this framework to make quantitative predictions regarding how interfering factors or experimental perturbations can change the landscape within a species, or to explain comparative differences in vocal development across species.
authors.affiliation: Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.
authors.forename: Yayoi
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3419-0351
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Teramoto
authors.affiliation: Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.|Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.
authors.forename: Daniel Y
authors.initials: DY
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.affiliation: Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.|Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Holmes
authors.affiliation: Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.|Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.|Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, United States.
authors.forename: Asif A
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-1960-7470
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Ghazanfar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002144:Callithrix / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: developmental systems; epigenetic landscape; marmoset monkey; neuromechanics; neuroscience; songbird; vocal tract resonance