The Genius of Birds

by Jennifer Ackerman

Both birds and humans appear to use working memory in a similar way. In our brains, the process that generates it arises in the layered cerebral cortex. But birds have no layered cortex, so how is information in the crow brain stored from moment to moment? To find out, Andreas Nieder and a team of researchers at the Institute for Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen taught four carrion crows to play a version of pairs, the game of memory that involves holding an image in mind while searching for its match. They showed the crows a random image. The birds then had to remember this image for a second before selecting the match out of four options by tapping the recalled picture with their beaks. Correct answers were rewarded with a mealworm or birdseed pellet. As the crows performed the task, the scientists observed the electrical activity in their brains. The crows were pros, accomplishing the matching task easily and proficiently. What was happening inside their brains? In what’s called the nidopallium caudolaterale region, an area analogous to the prefrontal cortex in a primate, a cluster of up to two hundred cells that were activated when the birds saw the original image remained activated while they searched for a match. This is the same mechanism that allows humans to hold in mind relevant information while we carry out a task.