Neuroethology
Neural approaches are necessarily very diverse, as is evident through the variety of questions asked, measuring techniques used, relationships explored, and model systems employed.
The discipline of neuroethology has also discovered and explained the only vertebrate behavior for which the entire neural circuit has been described: the electric fish jamming avoidance response.
By understanding simpler nervous systems, many clinicians have used concepts uncovered by neuroethology and other branches of neuroscience to develop treatments for devastating human diseases.
Although animal behavior had been studied since the time of Aristotle (384–342 BC), it was not until the early twentieth century that ethology finally became distinguished from natural science (a strictly descriptive field) and ecology.
Konrad Lorenz was born in Austria in 1903, and is widely known for his contribution of the theory of fixed action patterns (FAPs): endogenous, instinctive behaviors involving a complex sequence of movements that are triggered ("released") by a certain kind of stimulus.
Niko Tinbergen was born in the Netherlands in 1907 and worked closely with Lorenz in the development of the FAP theory; their studies focused on the egg retrieval response of nesting geese.
Tinbergen performed extensive research on the releasing mechanisms of particular FAPs, and used the bill-pecking behavior of baby herring gulls as his model system.
Contributors to this new understanding were the Spanish Neuroanatomist, Ramon y Cajal (born in 1852), and physiologists Charles Sherrington, Edgar Adrian, Alan Hodgkin, and Andrew Huxley.
He was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in 1932 along with Lord Edgar Adrian who made the first physiological recordings of neural activity from single nerve fibers.
Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley (born 1914 and 1917, respectively, in Great Britain), are known for their collaborative effort to understand the production of action potentials in the giant axons of squid.
The pair also proposed the existence of ion channels to facilitate action potential initiation, and were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1963 for their efforts.
As a result of this pioneering research, many scientists then sought to connect the physiological aspects of the nervous and sensory systems to specific behaviors.
[5] Neuroethology did not really come into its own, though, until the 1970s and 1980s, when new, sophisticated experimental methods allowed researchers such as Masakazu Konishi, Walter Heiligenberg, Jörg-Peter Ewert, and others to study the neural circuits underlying verifiable behavior.
Modern advances in neurophysiology techniques have enabled more exacting approaches in an ever-increasing number of animal systems, as size limitations are being dramatically overcome.
Neuroethologists seek to understand the neural basis of a behavior as it would occur in an animal's natural environment but the techniques for neurophysiological analysis are lab-based, and cannot be performed in the field setting.
Even though this was a breakthrough in technological abilities and technique, it was not used by many neuroethologists originally because it compromised a cat's natural state, and, therefore, in their minds, devalued the experiments' relevance to real situations.
Since then even indirect technological advancements such as battery-powered and waterproofed instruments have allowed neuroethologists to mimic natural conditions in the lab while they study behaviors objectively.
In addition, the electronics required for amplifying neural signals and for transmitting them over a certain distance have enabled neuroscientists to record from behaving animals[7] performing activities in naturalistic environments.
Neuroethologists foresee future advancements through using new technologies and techniques, such as computational neuroscience, neuroendocrinology, and molecular genetics that mimic natural environments.
Finally, the work of W. Heiligenberg expanded it into a full neuroethology study by examining the series of neural connections that led to the behavior.
This experiment is significant in that not only does it reveal a crucial neural mechanism underlying the behavior but also demonstrates the value neuroethologists place on studying animals in their natural habitats.
In focus was the discovery of prey-selective neurons in the optic tectum, whose axons could be traced towards the snapping pattern generating cells in the hypoglossal nucleus.
The discharge patterns of prey-selective tectal neurons in response to prey objects – in freely moving toads – "predicted" prey-catching reactions such as snapping.
Ewert and coworkers showed in toads that there are stimulus-response mediating pathways that translate perception (of visual sign stimuli) into action (adequate behavioral responses).
[19] Instead of feeding the model retina with idealized input signals, they exposed the simulation to digitized video sequences made underwater, and compared its response with those of real animals.
