John Douglas "Jack" Pettigrew | |
---|---|
Born | Wagga Wagga, Australia | October 2, 1943
Died | May 7, 2019 75) (aged Kempton, Tasmania, Australia |
Education | University of Sydney (MBBS) |
Spouse | Rona (m. 1968) |
Children | 3 |
John Douglas "Jack" Pettigrew (2 October 1943 [1] - 7 May 2019) was an Australian neuroscientist. He was Emeritus Professor of Physiology and Director of the Vision, Touch and Hearing Research Centre at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Pettigrew's research interest was in comparative neuroscience. He studied a variety of different birds and mammals with modern neuronal tracing techniques to unravel principles of brain organization. He was the chief proponent of the flying primate hypothesis, which was based on the similarity between the brains of megabats and primates. Special emphasis was placed on the visual, auditory and somatosensory systems. [2]
Pettigrew was the first person to clarify the neurobiological basis of stereopsis when he described neurones sensitive to binocular disparity. Later, he discovered that owls have independently evolved a system of binocular neurones like those found in mammals.
Pettigrew showed evidence for a role for non-visual pathways in the phenomenon of developmental neuroplasticity during the postnatal critical period.
Pettigrew used binocular rivalry as an assay for interhemispheric switching, whose rhythm is altered in bipolar disorder. [2]
Pettigrew’s scientific work was recognized by several honours and awards, including becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS)in 1987, [3] becoming a Fellow of the fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAAS) in the same year, and being awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001 for service to Australian society and science in phylogeny. [4]
In the 1960s and 1970s, Pettigrew was an accomplished rock climber. His most notable climb came in 1965 when together with Bryden Allen, John Davis, and David Witham he was the first to climb the 562 m (1,844 ft) high Ball's Pyramid, the tallest volcanic stack in the world. [5]
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In evolutionary biology, the flying primate hypothesis is that megabats, a subgroup of Chiroptera, form an evolutionary sister group of primates. The hypothesis began with Carl Linnaeus in 1758, and was again advanced by J.D. Smith in 1980. It was proposed in its modern form by Australian neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew in 1986 after he discovered that the connections between the retina and the superior colliculus in the megabat Pteropus were organized in the same way found in primates, and purportedly different from all other mammals. This was followed up by a longer study published in 1989, in which this was supported by the analysis of many other brain and body characteristics. Pettigrew suggested that flying foxes, colugos, and primates were all descendants of the same group of early arboreal mammals. The megabat flight and the colugo gliding could be both seen as locomotory adaptations to a life high above the ground.
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