Convergent Science Network Podcast

This post-lecture interview was conducted during the BCBT Summerschool held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, september 2010. 

Increasingly complex brains lead to more complex behavior, in which it becomes impossible to assess its functionality by looking at local parts alone. Leah Kubitzer (University of California, Davis, USA) has focused in her research on brain structure complexity, on how it can develop from simpler architectures, how modular structures emerge, and can be compared between species. Manipulation during brain development stages has offered her and her team the opportunity to study the influence on the behavior of animals by changing the number of anatomical parts, the size of cortical fields and connectivity between them. With Tony Prescott and Paul Verschure she discusses her findings, and current developments in a science that in her view desperately needs a larger framework to operate in.

About the lecturer
Leah Krubitzer heads the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobiology in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Krubitzer is also a faculty member of the Department of Psychology at UC Davis.
She takes a broad interest in the function, connectivity, development, and evolution of complex nervous systems, like the primate somatosensory system, and the evolution of complex brains in mammals.