On Friday the 12th of December 2014 Daniel Lengersdorf defended his PhD thesis entitled „ Function of the pigeon nidopallium caudolaterale and hippocampus in context-dependent extinction learning under appetitive conditions”. At its core, Daniel’s thesis opens a new path on the analysis of the possibly invariant properties of the neural fundaments of extinction learning in birds and mammals. With a set of ingeniously designed behavioral experiments, Daniel managed to show the specific contribution of the avian “prefrontal cortex” and the bird hippocampus on extinction learning and on context-dependent extinction memory retrieval. In addition, Daniel was able to show the contribution of ‘prefrontal’ NMDA-receptors for these functions. In his defense, Daniel successfully managed to answer all questions that were put forward by the committee. All in all, a great performance! Therefore, the committee unanimously decided to award him the title Dr. rer. nat. Congratulations Daniel! We are truly proud of you.