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Carrion Crows Decide Which Way Dots Move in About 235 Milliseconds

Research: Behaviour, Physiology

Two carrion crows (Corvus corone) judged whether moving dots on a screen were travelling mostly to the left or right. They reported their choice by pecking the corresponding target, making it possible for researchers to compare the timing of the birds’ decisions with activity in their brains.

On average, the crows responded in about 235 milliseconds while maintaining high accuracy. They performed better than chance even when the dots provided difficult-to-detect evidence about their direction.

Brain activity reflected the choice as it formed

The researchers recorded neural activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale, an associative region of the avian pallium, or forebrain, involved in complex cognitive processing. Direction-selective activity—signals that differed according to the direction of motion—encoded the crows’ upcoming choice as early as about 70 milliseconds after the dots appeared. That was roughly 170 milliseconds before the birds pecked their answer.

The activity increased with the strength of the visual evidence and converged around the time the crows responded. The authors interpret this pattern as consistent with decision-making models developed in primate research: neural activity reflects sensory evidence as a choice takes shape.

The results show how quickly visual evidence can be translated into a choice in a bird brain, and link that speed to measurable changes in neural activity. The authors note that the crows’ responses were faster than results reported in earlier studies of humans and monkeys, but those comparisons were not made in the same experiment. The behavioural study involved only two crows, so the findings offer a close look at these birds’ decision-making rather than a broad estimate for the species. The authors suggest that birds’ rapid visual and motor demands may have favoured fast processing, but the study does not establish what caused the speed difference.

Sources and image credit

  1. Ultrarapid decision-making in an avian brainPrimærkilde. Faktagrunnlaget for artikkelen er det verifiserte sammendraget.

Image: Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Representative photograph. · CC BY 4.0 · Source

About this content: This story was produced with AI assistance within an editorial workflow developed by Wildlife Vagabond. Editorial responsibility remains with Wildlife Vagabond.How AI is used

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