Specific Picture details:

Picture Caption: DeVoogd holding a newly-caught tufted titmouse (or is it the other way around?). Photo: SNP Research/Long description: Titmice are among the NY bird species that hide and retrieve food--a behavior requiring a working hippocampus. Contributed by: Timothy J. DeVoogd

Research/Photo Gallery

Other gallery pictures

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

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.

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

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

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

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