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Picture Caption: 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

Research/Photo Gallery

Other gallery pictures

Neurons within song control nucleus RA project to the hypoglossal nucleus, which in turn ennervates muscles used in singing in birds. These neurons are much more elaborate in males than in females, in species in which only males sing. In species that sing seasonally, the neurons are highly sensitive to hormones--they add perhaps 40% more connections as steroid levels rise in the spring, and lose them when the hormone levels drop in summer and fall. 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

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

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

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: Lori Miller (lmm8 AT cornell.edu)