Projekt

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The fundamental aim of cognitive neuroscience is to understand how the brain generates cognitive, intelligent behavior. Traditionally, it was achieved by studying humans and our close relatives. This approach goes back to a linear view of brain evolution which implies that an animal's intelligence is determined by its kinship to humans: no bird can be as intelligent as our cousin the sheep for instance. Indeed, relative to the evolution of intelligence, the lines of birds and mammals separated very early. This, however, does not mean that birds are not intelligent. It rather means that we don't owe our intelligence to a common ancestor and that our neural machinery for cognition evolved independently. In fact, crows surpass most mammals such as sheep. The project compares how avian and mammalian brains solve the same cognitive problems. Independent evolution of the same mechanism in both species implies a general neural principle. However, different neural solutions can challenge our models. The absence of cortical organization in birds, for example, demonstrates that cortex is not the only structure for intelligence.

• Prof. Dr. Jonas Rose

  Universität Bochum
  Fakultät für Psychologie
  Institut für Kognitive Neurowissenschaft
  Avian Cognitive Neuroscience
  Raum GA 04 / 47
  Bochum
  

• Crows Rival Monkeys in Cognitive Capacity