Henning Scheich - Böcker

Of the three organizers of this NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Neocortex: Onto- geny and Phylogeny", one derived most of his knowledge about neocortex from studies on birds, another had never studied any animal but the cat and could probably recognize not more than ten animal species, and the third had very limited experience with mountaineering. They had in common the belief that evolutionary thinking permeates what biologists do, but that evolution of species and structures cannot be directly experimentally addressed. Although the fossil record can provide some major insights, the inroad to the evolution of the brain is indirect, via comparative anatomy and developmental biology. By identifying similarities and differences between brain structures in the species at hand, comparative anatomy generates hypotheses of evolutionary transformations. By understanding the rules of morphological transformation, developmental biology can, in principle, estimate the likelihood that a given transformation may have actually occurred. The meeting was a way to check if this notion is viable, by gathering together scientists from these two fields. Standing, left to right: F. Ebner, V.Caviness, M. Weisskopf, B. Fritszch, N. Swindale, J. Walter, H. Karten, J. Pettigrew, E. Welker, M. Cynader, D. Frost, L. Lopez-Mascaraque, P. Katz, H. Jerison, E. Soriano, Mayor of Alagna, Dr. G. Guglielmina, and associate, H. Van der Loos, B. Finlay, H. Scheich, C. Ruela. Seated: S. Pallas, T. Lohmann, J. De Carlos, F. Valverde, G. Innocenti, M. Diamond v "Gathering" does not accurately describe what really happened.

Understanding human hearing is not only a scientific challenge but also a problem of growing social and political importance, given the steadily increasing numbers of people with hearing deficits or even deafness. This book is about the highest level of hearing in humans and other mammals. It brings together studies of both humans and animals thereby giving a more profound understanding of the concepts, approaches, techniques, and knowledge of the auditory cortex. All of the most up-to-date procedures of non-invasive imaging are employed in the research that is described.

Understanding human hearing is not only a scientific challenge but also a problem of growing social and political importance, given the steadily increasing numbers of people with hearing deficits or even deafness. This book is about the highest level of hearing in humans and other mammals. It brings together studies of both humans and animals thereby giving a more profound understanding of the concepts, approaches, techniques, and knowledge of the auditory cortex. All of the most up-to-date procedures of non-invasive imaging are employed in the research that is described.

Of the three organizers of this NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Neocortex: Onto- geny and Phylogeny", one derived most of his knowledge about neocortex from studies on birds, another had never studied any animal but the cat and could probably recognize not more than ten animal species, and the third had very limited experience with mountaineering. They had in common the belief that evolutionary thinking permeates what biologists do, but that evolution of species and structures cannot be directly experimentally addressed. Although the fossil record can provide some major insights, the inroad to the evolution of the brain is indirect, via comparative anatomy and developmental biology. By identifying similarities and differences between brain structures in the species at hand, comparative anatomy generates hypotheses of evolutionary transformations. By understanding the rules of morphological transformation, developmental biology can, in principle, estimate the likelihood that a given transformation may have actually occurred. The meeting was a way to check if this notion is viable, by gathering together scientists from these two fields. Standing, left to right: F. Ebner, V.Caviness, M. Weisskopf, B. Fritszch, N. Swindale, J. Walter, H. Karten, J. Pettigrew, E. Welker, M. Cynader, D. Frost, L. Lopez-Mascaraque, P. Katz, H. Jerison, E. Soriano, Mayor of Alagna, Dr. G. Guglielmina, and associate, H. Van der Loos, B. Finlay, H. Scheich, C. Ruela. Seated: S. Pallas, T. Lohmann, J. De Carlos, F. Valverde, G. Innocenti, M. Diamond v "Gathering" does not accurately describe what really happened.

Ever since the behavioral work of Lissrnann (1958), who showed that the weak electric discharges of some families of fish (hitherto considered useless for prey capture or for scaring away enemies) are part of a strange sensory system, these fish have attracted attention from biologists. The subsequent discovery of the electroreceptors in the skin of gymnotids and mormyrids (Bullock et al. 1961; Fessard and Szabo 1961) and the evidence that the ampullae of Lorenzini of nonelectric sharks and rays are also electro- receptors (Digkgraaf and Kalmijn 1962) was a start for a lively branch of physiological, anatomical, and behavioral research. Many fmdings of general importance for these fields have made the case to which extremes the performance of the central and peri- pheral nervous systems can be driven. Among those fmdings is the temporal accuracy of the pacemaker of some high-frequency fish which controls the electric organ, pro- bably the most accurate biological clock (coefficient of variation < 0. 0 1 %, Bullock 1982).The functional analysis of the pacemaker cells and their axons has established most of our knowledge on electrotonic synapses, the alternative to chemical synapses (Bennett et al. 1967), and of the implications of axonal delay lines for achieving extreme synchrony of parallel inputs to postsynaptic elements (Bennett 1972; Bruns 1971).