Postdoctoral Fellow

Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna
Department of Behavioural & Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna
Member of the Data Science @ Uni Vienna research network

Through my research, I aim to understand how sensory and cognitive systems evolve under the constraints imposed by natural environments. My work focuses on how the statistical structure of habitats shapes sensory processing, and how this, in turn, influences what organisms perceive, learn, and respond to during behavioural decisions such as mate choice. I mostly study those questions in fishes (Etheostoma; main external collaborators: Tamra Mendelson and Julien Renoult) and birds (e.g., Paradisaeidae family).
My research is at the intersection of cognitive science and ecology and evolution, enabling me to draw on my experience in vision neuroscience while engaging with questions and approaches from behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. I use quantitative and computational methods to formalise hypotheses about perception and decision-making and to explore how biases in sensory processing can shape the evolution of animal communication.

I also strongly emphasise collaborative research as I believe this helps overcome frequent challenges in the study of animal behaviour and cognition, such as limited sample sizes, number of studied species, or methodological biases. As such, I am part of two big team science initiatives: ManyManys and ManyFishes.

Beyond the Fusani Lab, I collaborate with Maciej Oczak from the PLF-Hub (VetMed) to investigate behavioural and hormonal stress responses in a social African cichlid (N. pulcher).

e-mail: Yseult.Hejja-Brichard@vetmeduni.ac.at
Personal page: https://yseulthb.github.io/
Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=B7sULyEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yseult-Hejja-Brichard