On Friday, the 30th of October 2020, Noemi successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the “Neural Circuits of Multi-Component Behavior in the Avian Brain”. Noemi delivered a fantastic tour through her research by first explaining the omnipresence of what we loosely call “multitasking” in our everyday life. She explained that different kinds of functional organizations of action selection and execution are present under this umbrella term and can be beautifully teased apart by the Stop-Change paradigm. Using this procedure, parallel and serial actions can be disambiguated. However, a major problem remains and blocks the path for causal studies: There is no animal model. The establishment of such an animal model is exactly the aim of Noemi’s thesis. To this end, she established all necessary components to show that pigeons can be perfectly tested as an animal model and can help to tease apart the critical neural components by using molecular imaging and behavioral local pharmacology. As beautiful as all of these achievements are, the crown jewel of her thesis is the subsequent establishment of optogenetics in pigeons. For sure, this achievement will change the landscape. The committee was deeply impressed and awarded this grand work with a magna cum laude.
Congratulations Noemi! We are incredibly proud of you.