A comparison of auditory evoked potentials in two species of sparrow

Auditory evoked potentials were recorded from the surface of the brain in young swamp and song sparrows. Responses to pure tones indicate that both species have similar auditory sensitivity during the sensitive period for song learning. Responses to the song syllables extracted from the normal adult song of both species show evidence of hemispheric differences for swamp sparrows listening to conspecific syllables but not to song sparrow syllables. Song sparrows showed no evidence of selective responsiveness to conspecific syllable type.