I'm kept awake with questions like: "Can different kinds of brains produce the same cognition?" or "Why are brains symmetrically organized?". My studies depart from two assumptions.

First, brains evolved to produce behavior. Thus, neuroscience has to use behavior as its explanandum. This is the reason why most of my experiments have a behavioral component.

Second, I believe that many neuroscientific conclusions are hampered by a "corticocentric fallacy" which assumes that complex behavior can only be generated by cortical circuits. We thereby overlook that many species come up with similar functions without these animals having a cortex.

Thus, if species with diverse brains produce similar behaviors, an approach that uses carefully selected, diverse species, should be able to reveal the common neural elements that possibly constitute the conditio sine qua non of a certain function. This is the reason why I work (in descending order) with pigeons, humans, dolphins, crocodiles and corvids as experimental subjects.

Thereby, I use approaches that reach from field work via behavioral experiments, single cell recordings, EEG, tract tracing and optogenetics up to brain imaging at ultrahigh magnetic fields. For the last one, my lab has developed the technology to study awake and actively discriminating pigeons within a 7T scanner system. By this means, we can study with high resolution the distributed activity patterns during diverse cognitive functions.

Subsequently, we can test these animals outside the scanner with behavioral studies that are accompanied with single cell recordings or optogenetic manipulations in those brain areas that were active during critical periods of the task. By this, we can move beyond correlative findings to reach causal conclusions.