Tuesday, 2 October 2012

Scientists find homolog of mammalian neocortex in bird brain

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-scientists-homolog-mammalian-neocortex-bird.html

In the chapter CLEVER CORVIDS in NOT A CHIMP I relay Nathan Emery's complaint that the brains of birds have been given short shrift in comparative biology. He points out that both birds and mammals have an embryonic brain region - the telencephalon - that can give rise to comparable structures. Furthermore, the cognitive feats of corvids allow them to shrug off the discouraging moniker "bird brains" for ever. Now scientists at Chicago have found an area of nuclei in the dorso-ventricular ridge in bird brains that behave very much like the neocortex in mammals.

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