Stephen Town

+44 (0)1223 741814
smt42@cam.ac.uk

I am interested in the storage of information within biological systems. Whilst this encompasses many areas of biology, my research activities focus on information stored within the central nervous system during learning. Specifically during filial imprinting, a process in which recently hatched precocial birds learn to selectively approach a well-experienced stimulus, normally their mother. Imprinting has a number of advantages as a model of learning as it is ethologically relevant, subject's experience can be quantified and controlled from the embryo onwards and rapid acquisition of information means experiments are easily replicated.

In my doctoral dissertation, entitled 'The role of context in filial imprinting (a neurophysiological study)', I am investigating the extent to which chicks learn about the environment (or context) in which the imprinting stimulus is experienced. My primary objective is to investigate the neural basis of such learning in simple monochrome environments using a combination of behavioural experiments and chronic in-vivo electrophysiological recordings from the brain. However I aim to extend this into an examination of more complex examples such as natural scenes or environments in which subjects are free to explore.

Funding
I receive financial support from the BBSRC and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.