Zebra finches sing sloppily when drunk

Does beer make you shlur your wordsh? You're not alone: drunk zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) sing songs that are blurrier and more disordered than those of their sober counterparts.

What's more, binge drinking may permanently impair juvenile finches' ability to learn new songs ? which could have implications for our understanding of the effect of heavy drinking on adolescents.

Having a unique and interesting song is important for zebra finches to mate, and each male develops his own signature tune as he matures, says Christopher Olson of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Because zebra finch song is so well studied, Olson and colleagues decided to find out how alcohol would affect it. First, they had to find out whether finches are even interested in alcohol.

When they gave a group of adult finches 6 per cent ethanol in their water bottles, the birds drank enough of it that their blood alcohol content sometimes reached 0.8 per cent: the legal limit for drivers in many places.

Husky bar voice

The birds were also happy to sing while drunk. Using audio analysis software, the researchers determined the degree of "white noise", or disorganised sounds, in their songs. The drunk birds' songs were significantly more broken and disorganised. "It's their husky bar voice," says Olson.

Next, the researchers tested how alcohol affects song learning by putting 3 per cent ethanol in the water bottles of birds who were only 40 days old and had just been weaned. They left the spiked water there for 90 days and measured the birds' songs periodically.

Almost immediately, significant differences appeared between these birds and controls. Normally, Olson says, young birds "babble" and experiment with disordered noises before settling on their own song, which is inspired by their fathers and cagemates.

But the drinking finches experimented less, and settled on a simple song at day 55.

It's surprising how early the researchers could see the effects in the adolescent birds, says Ofer Tchernichovski at the City University of New York. He says it is the first study of the effects of a drug on such a well-understood learned behaviour, and adds that he is curious to know what happens when the alcohol is withdrawn.

The researchers hypothesise that alcohol might be suppressing the young birds' creativity by hurting the plasticity, or flexibility of their brains to learn. In general, finches are no longer able to learn new songs as adults, Olson says, so the effects could be long-term. They are now following these birds for longer to determine whether adult birds become dependent on alcohol, and whether the young birds' songs develop any further if alcohol is withdrawn.

Olson presented the results at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, this week. He says the work may also tell us something about how learning behaviour in the adolescent human brain is affected by binge drinking.

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