2023-04-30
Birds are excellent model organisms to study perceptual categorization and concept formation. As part of the 25th Anniversary Special Issue of Animal Cognition, we review recent discoveries that have revealed how categorization is mediated in the avian brain and propose a theoretical framework that goes beyond the realm of birds. The renewed focus on avian neuroscience has sparked an explosion of new data in the field. At the same time, our understanding of sensory and particularly visual structures in the avian brain has shifted fundamentally. We review the contribution of avian categorization research—at the methodical, behavioral, and neurobiological levels. A behavioral perspective on avian categorization, is complemented by a description of the functional and structural organization of the avian visual system. Recent anatomical discoveries and the new perspective on the avian 'visual cortex' leads to the neurocomputational basis of perceptual categorization in the bird's visual system. Beyond the visual system, the "avian prefrontal cortex" and its contribution to perceptual categorization as well as insights how brain asymmetries contribute to categorization culminate in a mechanistic view of the neural principles of avian visual categorization and its putative extension to concept learning.
Birds are excellent model organisms to study perceptual categorization and concept formation. As part of the 25th Anniversary Special Issue of Animal Cognition, we review recent discoveries that have revealed how categorization is mediated in the avian brain and propose a theoretical framework that goes beyond the realm of birds. The renewed focus on avian neuroscience has sparked an explosion of new data in the field. At the same time, our understanding of sensory and particularly visual structures in the avian brain has shifted fundamentally. We review the contribution of avian categorization research—at the methodical, behavioral, and neurobiological levels. A behavioral perspective on avian categorization, is complemented by a description of the functional and structural organization of the avian visual system. Recent anatomical discoveries and the new perspective on the avian 'visual cortex' leads to the neurocomputational basis of perceptual categorization in the bird's visual system. Beyond the visual system, the "avian prefrontal cortex" and its contribution to perceptual categorization as well as insights how brain asymmetries contribute to categorization culminate in a mechanistic view of the neural principles of avian visual categorization and its putative extension to concept learning.
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Last update: May 15, 2023
