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SUMMARY:Bees' colour vision: lessons from understanding visual capabilitie
 s and cognition possible with the mini brain. - Adrian Dyer
DTSTART:20060124T130000Z
DTEND:20060124T140000Z
UID:TALK4653@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Cordula Becker
DESCRIPTION:To help understand visual cognition it is useful to know how a
 nimals with very small brains solve visual problems. Bumblebees and honeyb
 ees were therefore tested with a variety of colour discrimination tasks\, 
 and the results compared to existing data for human perception. Bees demon
 strated speed-accuracy tradeoffs when visual tasks varied in perceptual di
 fficulty. This indicates a sophisticated and dynamic decision making proce
 ss in bees that has a remarkable similarity to that previously reported fo
 r human decision making. We also observed that colour discrimination capab
 ilities in bees are very similar to that of humans\, and like humans bee d
 iscrimination is impaired by successive display conditions. Furthermore\, 
 mapping of bee successive discrimination shows a function that helps expla
 in why plants have evolved distinctively coloured flowers. The findings sh
 ow both that sophisticated decision making\, and high levels of colour dis
 crimination\, can be achieved with a brain that has approximately 0.01% of
  the number of neurons as the human brain.
LOCATION:Seminar Room (ground floor)\, Craik-Marshall Building
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