Benjamin Judkewitz | “The smallest vertebrate brain knows how to sing”

Emerging techniques \ Manfred Eigen lecture theatre

I will describe our work on Danionella cerebrum, a tiny fish that is small and transparent even in adulthood, when neural circuits and behavior have matured. Despite having the smallest known adult vertebrate brain, Danionella displays a rich set of behaviors, including courtship, schooling and – remarkably – acoustic communication. I will discuss recent insights into their vocalisation behavior, brain-wide processing of acoustic stimuli, and how these tiny fish solve a big problem posed by underwater acoustics: tell the direction of a sound source.

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