During the past decade, the massive worldwide conversion of learning content from print and other older media on to digital networks has created gatekeepers who limit access to their digital content or require online users to pay for it.

A variety of gatekeepers have made a third choice:
to open their content freely into the Internet.
These are their stories.

August 17, 2006

Avian Brains
Erich Jarvis and Colleagues

Bird and human brain comparisons
Image credit Zina Deretsky - NSF

Avianbrain.org is an online place for the meeting of the minds of bird brain scientists on the subject of the nomenclature that they use in their field. Their website is left open so that anyone interested in the subject can observe their collaboration and access the terminologies they develop. The website also has atlases for the brains of the chicken, pigeon and zebra finch.

The list of laboratories with the name of their chief scientists gives students interested in the study of neurology in birds and tour of who is doing what in the field.

A leader of the overall field is Erich Jarvis whose homepage is Erich Jarvis Lab. By introducing and explaining several topics, the Jarvis pages provide a tutorial in the study of the brains of birds. One of the topics, Songbird Neurogenomics, includes the illustration below. The text explains:

"We are creating a songbird (zebra finch) brain cDNA microarray gene chip that will contain brain cDNAs from birds undergoing vocal learning and vocal communication."

The avian brain web pages sketched out here create a bush of virtual nodes and links—filled with wonderful knowledge about songbirds. This is and impressive and delightful example of open educational resources that flourish in the Internet virtual knowledge ecology.