Experience dependent plasticity of perception

My name is Dr. Christopher Jernigan. I am a neuroethologist and currently an NIH K99 supported postdoctoral associate in Mike Sheehan's lab in the department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. My research focuses on how experience shapes the way animals respond to the world around them, and seeks to better understand why animal A may respond differently than animal B to a given stimulus. I employ a large number of techniques primarily working with social insects to explore how experience affects perception.

I have  recently discovered a patch of cells akin to primate face cells in the brain of a special wasp, Polistes fuscatus, which possesses individual facial identity recognition of conspecifics. My future work will seek to study the development of these cells, how they gain their selective tuning, as well as study the visual and sensory biology of these animals in greater detail with the ultimate goal of understanding how their brains recognize and discriminate nestmates, strangers, friends, enemies, etc.