Stefanie is working as a student assistant in the lab andis conducting her Master thesis in the lab. She is interested in how the different visual areas, especially the arcopallium and the hyperpallium, of the pigeon brain work together to make decisions, especially in conflict tasks. Another thing that interests her is to what extent the two hemispheres communicate with each other or even work against each other in conflict situations. Her master thesis therefore deals with the question of how optogenetic manipulations of different visual areas affect metacontrol in pigeons. The results of this project will hopefully reveal if metacontrol can be shifted towards the actually non-dominant hemisphere and the role of the arcopallium and the hyperpallium in this process. Optogenetic experiments have not been carried out for long, which is why the results of this project will be even more interesting.
Louisa Wagner
Louisa is conducting her Master thesis in the lab. Her project is about hemisphere-specific differences in the analysis of complex categories in pigeons. The aim is to investigate what information is used to visually categorise “cats” and “dogs” and how this differs between both hemispheres. What role does the specialisation of the hemispheres play for local and global analysis strategies? She is interested in this topic in order to examine the question of how categories are formed in the first place.
If you are interested to join our team, just contact Martina.
Martina Manns Lab 