In the framework of the “Fruits of Ethology” guest talk series we will have the pleasure to welcome our next speaker, Ilona Kovács (MTA-PPKE Adolescent Development Research Group).
Date: 14th March, Thursday, 15.30
Location: ELTE, South Building, 7.110, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c
Title: Nature/nurture, or a little bit of both?

Are there multiple sensitive periods when the brain is particularly susceptible to environmental stimulation, and neuronal plasticity is augmented? If yes, how can those be characterized?  I will talk about the extreme stimulus-driven development of the human visual brain right after birth, raising interesting questions with respect to the assumed critical periods in other species. Currently, we are also involved in a large-scale project that we call BETA (Biological and Experience-based Trajectories in Adolescent brain development, http://betalab.hu/). This project aims to dissociate biological and chronological age for the first time, and to investigate their role independently in adolescent cognitive functioning and in the development of large-scale functional cortical networks. Based on the results of our infant and adolescent studies we suggest a novel model of ontogenetic development addressing the age-old debate from a different perspective.

All welcome!
Márta Gácsi & Ádám Miklósi