"Cycling in the brain: Molecular microcircuitry for vocal learning"

Dr. White is interested in how social interactions influence neural plasticity. To investigate this, she focuses on the neural basis of vocal learning. Speech requires the ability to modify innate vocalizations in order to produce new ones. Only a handful of animal groups are known to exhibit this trait, with human speech and songbird song learning being the best-characterized. She focuses on a molecule known as FoxP2 that, when disrupted in humans or birds, disrupts speech or song, respectively. FoxP2 connects to the network of molecules that together enable learned vocal communication.