A University of Washington radiology/biology team proved crows recognize faces.

In 2012, John Marzluff conducted the face-recognition experiments mentioned earlier in this article in his TEDx Ranier talk, “Crows Are Smarter than You Think.”

As a scientist, he wished to identify the actual neural pathways in the avian brain which were activated with each type of emotional response to the faces and actions of the mask-wearing research team.

Therefor, his work involved brain imaging, using non-invasive PET scanning in combination with injection of a short-lived radiation/glucose procedure prior to a brain scan, so the crows could be fully awake. The glucose technique was suggested by co-author Donna Cross, who co-authored the study along Robert Miyaoka and Satoshi Minoshima, all faculty members with the UW’s radiology department.

We used positron emission tomography (PET) combined with administration of [F-18]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) to assess the brain activity of wild crows responding adaptively to these faces.

During an uptake phase when FDG accumulates in the brain proportional to regional brain activity, we kept the awake crow in a controlled physiologic condition and showed it one of the following:

• (i) a person wearing the mask that captured it,
• (ii) a person wearing the mask that fed it, or
• (iii) an empty room.

Once FDG was predominantly fixed in the brain, the subject could be imaged under anesthesia.

The resultant images showed brain activity during the uptake phase.

Although previously used for human brain mapping research (8), our experiment adapts this technology to map the response of a bird’s brain to a natural, visual, cognitive task and allows us to image a nonhuman animal responding to a human face (9, 10).

To read Dr. Marzluff’s 2012 article, entitled “Brain imaging reveals neuronal circuitry underlying the crow’s perception of human faces,” and especially to see the illustration of the experimental process and administration of the FDG to the hooded bird, followed by the PET scan at FIGURE 1, click here.

Figures 3, 4, and 5 in this article provide the PET images, such as were seen in his TEDx Ranier talk video, where different portions of the brain were highlighted as being engaged in response to the different types of faces and activities associated with those faces.

To see the follow-up study by Dr. Marzluff in 2013, click next page.