You can’t tell what a crow is thinking by how he/she acts.

In their 2013 follow-up to the 2012 face-recognition study, Dr. Marzluff and the radiology faculty repeated the face-recognition experiments, but studied crow brain neurological reactions in more detail.

We expand the use of FDG-PET imaging to test the hypothesis that distinct neuronal substrates underlie the crow’s consistent behavioural response to different dangers.

We found that crows activated brain regions associated with attention and arousal (nucleus isthmo-opticus/locus coeruleus), and with motor response (arcopallium), as they fixed their gaze on a threat. However, despite this consistent behavioural and neural response, the sight of a person who previously captured the crow, a person holding a dead crow and a taxidermy-mounted hawk activated distinct forebrain regions (amygdala, hippocampus and portion of the caudal nidopallium, respectively).

In other words, the crows seemed to act similarly in each situation. However, their brain activity indicated their neural responses were dissimilar, and differentiated between the different stimuli.

As a result, the researchers “began to extend” knowledge of the brain, not only for the crows, but also for animals whose brains may be analogized to parts of the crow brain.

Applying the principles of neuroecology—contrasting the neural responses of a diversity of animals in ecologically salient situations [25]—we are beginning to extend what is known from mammals, including humans, to birds. The amygdala, specifically within the brain’s right hemisphere, has thus been implicated as playing a central role in the acquisition of learned fear [26]. By imaging the whole brain of the fearful crow, we revealed a neural network involving telencephalic pallial regions (e.g. nidopallium and mesopallium), subpallial emotional regions (e.g. nucleus taeniae of the amygdala) and premotor regions (e.g. arcopallium), as well as nuclei in the dorsal thalamus and brainstem [21]

Pictures of the brain regions being activated are seen in the Figures in this article, and are similar in nature to the brain imaages seen in the 2012 article.

To read the very detailed 2013 article, click here.

Click next page to read about a German study which uses electrodes to identify operation of different parts of the brain of a carrion crow, with the objective of identifying the operation of “working memory” which allows the crow to execute tasks based on reasoning.