Research/Photo Gallery

New cells (black), many of them neurons, continue to form throughout life in many parts of the brains of birds. Here they are dividing in a zone of the hippocampus next to the ventricle, in an adult chickadee. As they mature, these cells migrate away from the venticle and deep into the hippocampus. Grad student Bernard Tarr has found that changes in the birds' housing environment can affect the volume of the hippocampus. He is now determining whether this treatment also affects the survival or destination of such new cells. Contributed by: Timothy J. DeVoogd

DeVoogd with colleague Joszef Buki looking for territories of African Marsh warblers and Cape Reed warblers in South Africa. Males in these closely related species sing songs that differ dramatically in complexity, making them attractive for examining the neural substrate for song learning, and how brains are changed by the process of learning. Contributed by: Timothy J. DeVoogd

A neuron from HVC in a canary. This brain area is involved in song learning and production. Information (ultimately auditory) comes to each of the thorn-like projections (synapses) off the thicker branches (dendrites) of this cell, and is transmitted to other cells (including motor cells) via the smooth thread-like projection from the cell body (axon). Birds prevented from learning a song having fewer spine synapses than normally reared birds. There is no significant way in which the appearance or action of this cell differs from a human neuron. Contributed by: Timothy J. DeVoogd

During the spring and summer, midshipman fish (Porichthys notatus) migrate from deep waters offshore to spawn in nests in the intertidal zone along the Pacific coast of North America. Females use the male advertisement call (ÏhumÓ) to find a maleÌs nest in the rocky intertidal zone. Shown here are newly hatched midshipman embryos (about 10 Ò14 days old, about 0.8-1.0 cm length), each attached to the surface of a small rock by an adhesive disk on the bottom surface of their yolk sac Contributed by: Andrew H. Bass

This shows a 3rd instar larvae that has been dissected to show the musculature and the nervous system. The two white circles are the brain lobes, and the oval below it is the ganglion, where all the axons reach out to innervate muscles.

Please report corrections, questions, comments, and problems to: Mark V. Albert (mva6 AT cornell.edu)