You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, or so the saying goes. But research by Eric Knudsen, PhD, professor of neurobiology, hints that older brains are still capable of learning as long as that learning takes place in small doses.

Knudsen will be discussing his work with barn owls at a community faculty lecture tonight at 7 p.m. in the Clark Center auditorium.

Knudsen’s research uses lenses that shift an owl’s world to the right or left. Wearing these lenses, you may see a coffee cup to the right when it is actually straight ahead. How quickly the owls adjust to the lenses — the equivalent of reaching for the cup where it actually is rather than where it appears — is a measure of how quickly the animals learn.

Knudsen has found that young owls can adjust to vision-altering lenses. Older owls can’t adjust to a single large change, but if Knudsen shifts their vision in small increments the owls can eventually work up to the most vision-altering lenses.