Student Presenter(s): Mohit Shah
Faculty Mentor: Akinobu Watanabe
School/College: Health Professions, Old Westbury

How do brain morphologies change over time? Studies on this topic generally rely on incomplete fossil records to infer evolutionary changes occurring across millions of years or by using model organisms that target a single species. These methods limit our ability to understand actual evolutionary mechanisms. In this study, we introduce a promising model to look at how new brain configurations develop over time. The Polish crested chicken (PCC) is a breed of chicken that has been artificially selected for its crest of feathers on its head. Notably, this phenotype is associated with a cranial protuberance of the skull and a cerebral herniation that occupies this protuberance, leading to a ‘dumbbell-shaped brain’. Despite having only recently diverged from domesticated chicken breeds, like the white leghorn chicken (WLC), this unique brain morphology is found only in PCCs. To define and differentiate the internal brain anatomy of PCCs, we CT-scanned head samples of both PCC & WLC chickens intending to create a high-resolution 3D brain atlas. Preliminary results indicate that PCCs possess a proportionally smaller hyperpallium and proportionally larger hippocampus when compared to WLCs. This data may indicate distinct behavioral or functional differences between the two breeds. Future research will help clarify the origins of unique brain morphologies, including our own, and how internal neuronal structures and connections respond to drastic changes in brain configuration.