Note: This workshop will be jointly held with Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences, Hokkaido University.

Speaker: Prof. Kazuhiro Wada (Division of Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, School of Science, Hokkaido University)

Title: “Nature and Nurture” from the neurobehavioral perspective: What we can learn, what we can’t learn, and the regulatory mechanisms..

Date: October 14, 2010 (Thursday) 13:30～15:00

Location: Hokkaido University, Faculty of Letters, room E204

Participants: Tatsuya Kameda, Susumu Ohnuma, Masaki Yuki, Nobuyuki Takahashi, Taiki Takahashi, Mizuho Shinada, Satomi Higuchi, and Others (20 participants): total 27 participants.

Content: 
The purpose of this talk is to introduce the approach to elucidate the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying animal behaviors, including linguistic communication of humans. Dr. Wada and his colleagues have been studying the behavior of “songbirds”, which have a very unique “singing songs” behavioral pattern. What and how animals learn is dependent on species-specific biological constraints and growing environment. We discussed about the physiological changes of neurons in learning process.