Specific Picture details:

Picture Caption: One of the on-campus waterfalls between College Ave. and Stewart Ave. in the Cascadilla Gorge Contributed by: Mark V. Albert

Research/Photo Gallery

Other gallery pictures

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

Expression of CCAP RNA (right) in CCAP immunoreactive neurons (left) in the Drosophila CNS. Work on the moth, Manduca sexta, strongly suggests that the peptide Crustacean Cardioactive Peptide (CCAP) is central to the control of ecdysis. We have initiated the genetic analysis of CCAP function in Drosophila by examining the behavior of transgenic flies bearing targeted ablations of CCAP neurons (Park et al., 2002). Arrows and arrowheads point to neurons expressing CCAP. Br: brain; vns: ventral nervous system. Contributed by: John Ewer

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

When participants are instructed to click an object on the computer screen, the continuous trajectory of the mouse (green circles) exhibits attraction effects from objects with similar names (i.e., the candle).  These continuous attraction effects share much in common with a dynamical system settling into one or another of its attractor basins (shown underneath). See Spivey, Grosjean, & Knoblich (2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Contributed by: Michael J. Spivey

Shown here is a male beaugregory damselfish courting a female who is in a bottle. Males are given territories made of PVC piping (artificial nest sites) which are considered high-quality nests by males and females. Males on these sites dramatically increase their reproduction, courtship, and aggression levels over males on natural nest sites. We test the effects of neuropeptides on these behaviors as well as the male's vocalizations.

Please report corrections, questions, comments, and problems to: Lori Miller (lmm8 AT cornell.edu)