Symposium on ‘Evolving approaches for studying the anatomy of the avian brain’: introduction

Birds have long been recognized as the only vertebrates that approach the level of brain expansion observed in mammals, yet until recently avian brain evolution has garnered only a fraction of the research effort devoted to mammals. Avian neuroanatomical research is rapidly expanding in scope, fueled by advances in imaging techniques, gene expression studies, and the discovery of new fossils bridging the transition from non-avian dinosaurs to...