Neural Analysis of Visual Discrimination

University Of South Florida, Tampa FL

Investigators

Abstract

Birds have excellent visual acuity, color vision, pattern discrimination ability, and visual memory, all of which are almost equal to, or sometimes superior to, these same abilities of the highly visual primates. Although the overall pattern of brain organization is similar among all vertebrates, the neural substrates responsible for these visual abilities appear to be different between birds and primates. How is it possible that anatomically different brains solve similar biological problems of visual information processing? This project focuses on the tectofugal pathway in the pigeon brain, which is critical for many visual discrimination tasks. Anatomical, lesion, and molecular techniques will be used to study the organization and function of the pathway in mate recognition. In particular, a computer-animated pigeon-- "virtual pigeon"-- will be presented to male pigeons to investigate how a complex natural signal is processed in the tectofugal pathway. Comparative research data from the distinct systems of birds and primates will contribute to understanding the general and specific principles of the two neural systems. Such information in turn will be important to increase the understanding of the origin and evolution of these abilities in different species.