Ernst Bresslau Lecture 2023

Ernst Bresslau Lecture 2023

Speaker:
Prof. Brian H Smith

Title:
Reverse engineering brains: Use of animal ‘models’ for understanding the relation between brain, behavior and cognition

Host

Martin Nawrot

This year, for the third time, the Institute for Zoology of the University of Cologne awards the Ernst-Bresslau Guest Professorship. For the academic year 2023/2024 the honor is granted to Prof. Brian Harvey Smith, a renowned zoologist and behavioral neuroscientist at the Arizona State University, USA. With the establishment of the Ernst Bresslau Guest Professorship, the University of Cologne faces up to its history and responsibility for injustices committed during the National Socialist’s regime. Ernst Bresslau was the founder and first director of the Institute of Zoology at the University of Cologne [1]. In 1933 and because of his Jewish background he was he was forced into premature and involuntary “retirement” under National Socialist rule through the university administration, a fate shared by many colleagues at the University of Cologne. In 1934 Ernst Bresslau emigrated to Brazil where he founded the Institute of Zoology of Sao Paolo.

[1] Pflüger, H. J. (2017). Professor Ernst Bresslau, founder of the Zoology Departments at the Universities of Cologne and Sao Paulo: lessons to learn from his life history. Zoology, 122, 1-6, doi.org/10.1016/j.zool.2017.04.002.

Abstract

Neuroscientists are tasked with understanding how the brain works. To do this neuroscientists must ‘reverse engineering’ from a whole brain to understanding its components parts. Fortunately, the nervous systems of all animals work by way of the same types of electrical and chemical signaling. So we can understand a lot about brains in general from studying a wide variety of animal nervous systems, which helps with the reverse engineering problem. In particular, brain-to-body size relationships across different animals, including the developmental mechanisms that regulate brain size, can tell us a lot about the evolution of cognition. Because of their small brain size and surprising learning abilities, insects can tell us a lot about how animal cognition has evolved and how cognitive abilities are enabled by brain circuitry. This talk will review briefly how brains evolve, and it will feature examples of insect cognition that fit into the picture of the how learning capacity emerges from neural processing.