Mechanisms of Avian Object Perception and Recognition

Tufts University, Medford MA

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this research is to understand how animals, and more specifically birds, perceive and learn about the world. In particular, the Principal Investigator is investigating how birds perceive objects and whether the cognitive and brain mechanisms involved are the same as or different from those of humans and other animals. Pigeons are ideal for such comparative cognitive studies because they have evolved small, powerful, central nervous systems capable of exceptional visual perception and complex discrimination learning. The objectives of the research are to advance three related lines of investigations looking at how pigeons detect and recognize the edges of objects, detect and recognize changes in an object when it moves or rotates, and how complex objects are broken by into smaller parts for the purposes of recognition. These are universally agreed on by vision scientists to be fundamental issues in understanding the mechanisms of visual perception. Visual perception continues to be one the most demanding and difficult biological riddles to solve. For example, it is still beyond our capacities to build a visually-directed robot that can match a chickadee''s ability to move through a visually noisy forest canopy. Examining these perceptual mechanisms in small visually sophisticated animals, like birds, is a key step towards solving such questions. This research will immediately impact our understanding of the visual, neural, psychological mechanisms by which complex animals, including humans, perceive the world. This type of comparative research is also part of a larger scientific enterprise by many scientists to understand the evolution and mechanisms of cognition and behavior and their functions in the natural world by investigating the distribution of behavioral similarities and differences among a wide variety of animal species in both laboratory and field settings. Beyond its scientific importance to theories of animal behavior, the proposed research has broader impacts and applications to human health, welfare, and education. This research is part of the general effort to understand how the brain generates and controls behavior. An understanding of the mechanisms of how small biological systems work may lead to the practical engineering of similar ?smart? systems for a variety of purposes (e.g., compact visual prostheses for the blind, autonomous robots for search and rescue, efficient information transmission algorithms). Activities related to the research will be used to educate and train students at the graduate, undergraduate, secondary and primary levels of education. Outreach programs using the internet will also be pursued.