The Cognitive Neuroecology Lab is interested in how brains differ across species, how these differences came about, and what their consequences are. We develop and apply methods for quantitative comparative neuroscience. These methods allow us to describe any brain (different species, different stages of development, health or disease) within the same space, allowing direct comparisons.
This allows us to study brain evolution. To date, we have compared a large range of primate species’ brains, highlighting evolutionary changes in the association cortex across different lineages. More recently, we have added carnivores and rodents to the mix. Using high resolution neuroimaging data from post-mortem brain samples, we are able to study these animals after their natural death, allowing us to learn from them. Using human functional neuroimaging, we then study how potentially uniquely human aspects of brain organisation contribute to our behavioural repertoire.
A second application of our work is in translational neuroscience. Using the tools we have developed, we aim to improve the translation from preclinical (e.g., mouse and rat) neuroimaging to human clinical practice. To this end, we are currently working on a large project building a mouse-to-human brain atlas.