Avian Brains and a New Understanding of Vertebrate Brain Evolution

Overview

Journal Nat Rev Neurosci

Specialty Neurology

Date 2005 Feb 3

PMID 15685220

Citations 285

Authors

Erich D Jarvis

Onur Gunturkun

Laura Bruce

Andras Csillag

Harvey Karten

Wayne Kuenzel

Loreta Medina

George Paxinos

David J Perkel

Toru Shimizu

Georg Striedter

J Martin Wild

Gregory F Ball

Jennifer Dugas-Ford

Sarah E Durand

Gerald E Hough

Scott Husband

Lubica Kubikova

Diane W Lee

Claudio V Mello

Alice Powers

Connie Siang

Tom V Smulders

Kazuhiro Wada

Stephanie A White

Keiko Yamamoto

Jing Yu

Anton Reiner

Ann B Butler

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We believe that names have a powerful influence on the experiments we do and the way in which we think. For this reason, and in the light of new evidence about the function and evolution of the vertebrate brain, an international consortium of neuroscientists has reconsidered the traditional, 100-year-old terminology that is used to describe the avian cerebrum. Our current understanding of the avian brain - in particular the neocortex-like cognitive functions of the avian pallium - requires a new terminology that better reflects these functions and the homologies between avian and mammalian brains.

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