Rogier Mars

Rogier is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford. He explores what it is that makes brains the way they are. Primates, and especially humans, have exceptionally large brains for their body size. Between primates, brains differ in size and in their internal organization. Why is this? Rogier believes each brain is an adaptation to the particular environment its owner lives in. He tries to understand differences between brains as the result of deviations from ancestral brains that arose to deal with challenges in the environment. To study these question his group uses two complementary approaches. First, they study how the human brain is organized and works using a range of non-invasive brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Second, they use magnetic resonance imaging to compare the organization of different brains. They scan the brains from deceased animals to study the size, location, and connections of different brain regions and compare these between species.