BY PERFORMING some unusual brain surgery, researchers have created a chicken
“chimera” that prefers the maternal cries of quails to the calling of mother
hens. The work may help us understand how our brains evolved to perceive and
react to the world.
Evan Balaban and his colleagues at The City University of New York found they
could change how chickens respond to their mother’s voice by replacing a sliver
of tissue between the mid and forebrain with a slice from a Japanese quail. This
region lies outside known sound-processing areas of the brain, and its exact
role is a mystery.…
