QBI Seminar: 400 million year old colour and polarisation vision: New developments in bio-inspired imaging and information flow from the sea
Event Details
- Date:
- Wednesday, 04 March 2015
- Time:
- 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Room:
- Level 7 Auditorium
- UQ Location:
- Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)
- URL:
- http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/neuroscience-seminars
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Ms Deirdre Wilson
- Phone:
- 66300
- Email:
- d.wilson5@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Queensland Brain Institute
Event Description
- Full Description:
- Professor Justin Marshall
Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland
Title: 400 million year old colour and polarisation vision: New developments in bio-inspired imaging and information flow from the sea
Abstract:
Colour vision and use of colour for communication (and camouflage) is a rich sub-discipline in neuroscience. Polarisation vision for navigation and other large-field tasks, is equally well investigated with Australian desert ants or bees being a fine examples. This talk will demonstrate how, for some animals in some environments, polarisation also provides the observer with information about object contrast, just like colour. Both aquatic and terrestrial habitats are now revealing a rich language of polarisation signalling and communication but probably not camouflage. For many (but not all) cephalopods and crustaceans but probably not (most) fish, polarisation may be more useful than colour.
A new generation of bio-inspired, nanofabricated, very cool polarisation video cameras are under development using this new line of research and may help visualise neural activity and cancerous tissue as well as help interpret the messages of animals that communicate with polarisation. It is the stomatopod crustaceans that provide the core to much of this bio-inspiration. Their unconventional way of interpreting both colour and polarisation information has the potential to underwrite new principles in circuit design and information flow as well as camera technologies and data storage devices.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
-
- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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