Peter Cook

Peter Cook

@pfcook.bsky.social

Associate Professor @marmamsci-ncf.bsky.social Studying memory, rhythm, vocal learning, and behavioral plasticity, and related brain, mostly in marine mammals, and most mostly in sea lions https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LfoEA4oAAAAJ&hl=en

181 followers162 following179 posts

Peter Cook reposted

Dr George RA Hancock 🦋🦎
@grahancock.bsky.social

Woohoo, it's now live! We show, using four lines of evidence, that butterfly wings can create illusory motion effects! @esbriolat.bsky.social, @scienceanna.bsky.social, @lauraakelley.bsky.social, @jtroscianko.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comButterfly wing patterns in flight create powerful illusory motion cues - NatureButterfly wing patterns and flight dynamics work in tandem to create powerful visual illusions that confuse predators, potentially representing one of the most successful visual defence strategies in ...
Peter Cook
@pfcook.bsky.social

I was particularly excited to see elaboration of the superorbital sulcus seals - this region appears to overlap with vocal motor cortex, and seals have apparently much greater vocal production plasticity than sea lions. Also interesting changes in somatomotor cortex possibly related to locomotion.

Peter Cook reposted

Dr James Rule
@palaeo-jrule.bsky.social

Seals have a superpower: they are the only mammals with amphibious hearing! They hear well both in-air and underwater. My collagues and I have a new study in Proceedings B on the origins and evolution of amphibious hearing in pinnipeds 🦭🔊🧪 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

doi.orgThe origin and evolution of amphibious hearing in pinnipedsAbstract. Pinnipeds (true seals, eared seals and walruses) are the only mammals that can hear effectively in both air and water. How and when they achieved
Peter Cook
@pfcook.bsky.social

Obviously a fun study, but rhythmicity is more the rule than the exception in repetitive vertebrate vocalizations. The rhythm typically comes from respiratory cycles and peripheral effector resonance, not cortical neural control.

Peter Cook reposted

International Society for Neuroethology
@neuroethology.org

New paper from Ulanovsky's group: With brain recordings from🦇 flying in a 200m tunnel, the group discovered that place cells of CA1 exhibit dense spatial coding, i.e., multiple place fields, and cells of CA3 exhibit ultrasparse coding, i.e., one place field. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comSparse-to-dense coding transformation between hippocampal areas CA3 and CA1 - NatureThe hippocampus exhibits a CA3-to-CA1 coding transformation that combines fast learning with an efficient, compressed neural code.
Peter Cook
@pfcook.bsky.social

Great work from Simone Videsen. We found sperm whale slow clicks maintain extreme isochrony with inter-click intervals up to ~10s. That's beyond any known neural system for precise interval timing. May be a long-distance communication system. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.comNYAS PublicationsIn this study, we show that male sperm whales produce low-frequency slow clicks at low repetition rates with extreme source levels > 200 dB re 1 µPa (pp), making them the loudest mammalian communicat...

Peter Cook reposted

Cedric Boeckx
@cedricboeckx.bsky.social

Very interesting new work by @lingzhongfan.bsky.social & colleagues, identifying an arcuate fasciculus homolog in the marmoset brain — with implications for the evolution of the neural scaffold supporting vocal communication 🧪🧠 www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

pnas.orgHomologous specialization of arcuate fasciculus ventrolateral frontal connectivity in marmosets and humans | PNASThe arcuate fasciculus (af) is a crucial dorsal pathway underpinning human language, yet its weak frontal connectivity in macaques—the standard pri...

Peter Cook reposted

hakwan lau
@hakwan.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... "mental imagery reactivates the same sensory codes used during visual stimuli, suggesting the existence of a generative model capable of synthesizing detailed sensory contents from an abstract, semantic representation."

science.orgA shared code for perceiving and imagining objects in human ventral temporal cortexMental imagery allows us to remember previous experiences and imagine new ones. Animal studies have yielded rich insight into mechanisms for visual perception, but the neural mechanisms for visual imagery remain poorly understood. We determined that ...
Peter Cook
@pfcook.bsky.social

This is fascinating - bees learned non-isochronous temporal patterns that indicated reward and then spontaneously generated them across tempos and sensory modalities. Bees have like 1 million neurons, so you don't need a big brain for this. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.orgFlexible, abstract rhythm perception in bumble beesFlexible, abstract rhythm perception underpins human music, dance, and speech, but thus far, it has only been demonstrated in a few birds and mammals. In this work, we show that bumble bees also form ...

Peter Cook reposted

The Transmitter
@thetransmitter.bsky.social

Explore “Brainstorming,” @thetransmitter.bsky.social’s new LinkedIn newsletter that looks at how neuroscientists are solving research challenges. The first edition features nontraditional model organisms that are well suited for studying certain behaviors or neurological conditions. bit.ly/4v6x506

bit.lyThe nontraditional model organism renaissanceEach month, The Transmitter explores creative approaches neuroscientists are taking to solve problems that arise in their research. In this installment, we see how researchers work backward from speci...
Peter Cook
@pfcook.bsky.social

Love this framing by @biotay.bsky.social - I always lead with vocal learning and then work back to breathing, but the reverse is far less cognitively frictive.

Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró)@biotay.bsky.social

1/5 Did diving help seals “talk”? In part, it did: life in the water selected for very fine voluntary control of breathing, and that seems to have opened the door to greater control over the voice and, eventually, vocal learning. (paper) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... by @pfcook.bsky.social

Peter Cook reposted

Science Magazine
@science.org

By mapping the brains of seals and sea lions, researchers have uncovered specialized neural circuits that have evolved to support the control of complex vocal behavior and learning in the species. Learn more this week in Science: https://scim.ag/4bpsJYU