Research Seminar (Coen Elemans)

IMSI Research Seminars are open to the public. For Zoom access, please email cims@uci.edu.

Title: Embodied Motor Control of the Animal Voice

Speaker: Professor Coen P. H. Elemans (University of Southern Denmark)

Date: March 11th, 2026, at 1-2pm PT

Abstract: Our voice is important for human communication, identity, and artistic expression, and laid the basis for our unique cultural evolution. Making sounds with our voices is also the main way all mammals, amphibians, and birds communicate. This process involves complex and carefully coordinated body movements, which are crucial for success in competition for resources and finding mates. However, we still have only a basic understanding of the mechanisms that control both animal and human voices.

Over the past ten years, Prof. Elemans’ lab has identified physical mechanisms how sounds are produced across different vocal vertebrates. In addition to discovering remarkable adaptations in rodents and aquatic frogs, they have shown that the myoelastic-aerodynamic theory for human sound production explains how many vertebrates, including birds, primates, bats, but also toothed and baleen whales, generate sound. This groundwork was crucial for defining and quantifying the parameters that modulate these vocal signals, and for building embodied models of vocal motor control in key animal model systems for vocal communication.