Malcolm MacIver
February 2, 2023
Zoom recording
Abstract:
In this talk I’ll detail some results from our group on how visual systems changed at the water to land transition 380 million years ago. I’ll use that work to motivate a series of simulation studies on whether the 10x increase in relative brain size found in terrestrial endotherms (birds, mammals) can be informed by the need to master terrestrial environments through an enhanced ability to plan and learn. I’ll also touch on preliminary data from a new set of studies in the lab that tests some of these ideas by way of a large spatially complex apparatus where mice are pursued by an autonomous robot ‘predator’ (using air puffs as the aversive stimulus).