Speaker: Ali Qadri, postdoctoral scholar at Tufts University
Date, time, and place: February 25, 2019, Monday, 12:40-13:30, A130
Title: Animal Cognition – How the Avian Brain Interprets the Bird’s-eye View
Abstract: Human neural machinery has evolved particular mechanisms to solve the hard computational problems of vision and cognition. Non-human animals like birds, however, have evolved separately from humans for 300 million years, and consequently the mechanisms in these small-bodied organisms may be distinct from that found in humans. My research aims to elucidate potential divergent evolution in processing by determining if there are algorithmic differences in how birds process the visual world or solve other cognitive tasks. Several lines of experiments elucidate how birds perceive objects and actions, and one investigates possible neural mechanisms underlying complex motion processing in pigeons.
Bio: Ali Qadri is a postdoctoral scholar at Tufts University investigating cognition in numerous non-human animal models. He uses a blend of computational, neurological, and psychological methods to explore aspects of form perception, motion perception, action recognition, and general cognition.