A summary of the lab's recent work: "We use our words to communicate with each other every day, and we rely on good decision making to keep us healthy and out of trouble. In both speech and decision making, specialized circuits in the brain enable us to learn from experience. When we take a close look at songbirds, we find that they do they same thing. Birds learn their songs just like we learn the sounds we use in speech, and female birds evaluate the quality of male birds’ songs in order to select their mates. How does the brain do that, and how can we use that insight to understand more about ourselves?"
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| Dr. Jonathan Prather |
Wednesday, November 30
UW Berry Center Auditorium
10th Street and Lewis Street
Laramie, Wyoming
Free parking after 5 pm
6:30 pm Refreshments and Bird Chat
7:00 pm Program begins
The Science Café will feature three talks:
Dr. Jonathan Prather - How the brain learns to communicate and make good decisions: What studying songbirds can teach us about human behavior
Karagh Murphy - What songbirds can teach us about human behavior
Jeff Dunning - Shedding light on the female songbird brain
We will also hold our annual board member elections at this meeting. Members who cannot attend this meeting will be able to vote via an online survey, coming soon to your email.
