("Daniel A. Levy" )

Subject: 
From:    "Daniel A. Levy"  <dlevyisi(at)NETVISION.NET.IL>
Date:    Sat, 4 May 2002 21:28:45 +0200

Honorable List,

In the course of writing up an electrophysiological (ERP) study of
pre-phonetic processing specificity for human voice stimuli, I have been
considering the argument that the existence of dedicated areas or systems
for face or voice processing yielding speeded or more accurate analysis
of those perceptual objects is adaptive.

I would like to know whether it has been found that in non-human animals,
aside from differences in general perceptual abilities in any given sensory
modality, that there is specialization for particular perceptual objects
that are attributed to the adaptive significance of those objects in the
animal's environment.

What I have already read and heard about are phenomena such as
specialization for species-specific vocalizations, or face processing in
primates - these phenomena are rather along the same lines as face or voice
processing in humans. There are of course, specializations for the
production of sound, such as bird song. But are there cases of e.g. animal
brain areas/systems specialized for predator or prey sound perception, or
bird brain areas for visual insect identification?

Innate specialization or plasticity resulting from acquired expertise would
both be interesting.

Thank you,

Daniel

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Daniel A. Levy
Cognitive Electrophysiology Laboratory
Department of Psychology
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905 ISRAEL