CONFUSION reigns among
those studying animal minds, following the revelation that Harvard University has investigated alleged misconduct in the lab of one of the field's brightest stars.
When it comes to
studying the animal mind, dogs have traditionally been ignored.
Not exact matches
The objects of his
study range from a class of molecules that have the basic self - duplicating property of living things, through cells which suggest purely physical systems, through
animals which give increasing evidence of having
minds, to human beings in whom streams of consciousness seem to involve continual choices of action, at the opposite pole from control by impersonal laws of nature.
«One big limit was the idea that we can
study animal behavior, but we can not understand their
minds because that's subjective.»
With this strength in
mind, he sat down at his typewriter and began tapping out an argument for full - fledged
animal studies to examine phytic acid's potential for protecting against heart disease and cancer.
While previous investigations into the protein's effects have used either mice in which gene expression was knocked out or transgenic
animals that expressed human gene variants throughout their lifetimes, the MGH -
MIND - led
study used a different approach to investigate the effects of introducing the variant forms of the protein into brains in which plaque formation had already begun.
«Testing the idea that nonhuman [
animals] can have
minds has been the Rubicon that skeptics have again and again said no nonhuman has ever, or will ever, cross,» says Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved in the
study.
The findings may influence the way wildlife managers look after small populations, says Hogg, whose team reported its findings online 28 February in Proceedings of the Royal Society: B. Managers often like to keep
animals away from other populations to minimize the spread of disease, he says, but the
study shows «it makes sense to manage with both disease and genetics in
mind.»
More: Psychopharmacology: Molecules of the
mind fMRI: Watching the brain in action Cognitive neuroscience: A critical bridge
Studying intellectual disabilities: Vanderbilt's legacy of brain science
Animal brains: Models of the human condition The brain on trial: The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience
More: A multidisciplinary approach: The Vanderbilt Brain Institute Psychopharmacology: Molecules of the
mind fMRI: Watching the brain in action Cognitive neuroscience: A critical bridge
Studying intellectual disabilities: Vanderbilt's legacy of brain science
Animal brains: Models of the human condition
More: A multidisciplinary approach: The Vanderbilt Brain Institute Psychopharmacology: Molecules of the
mind Cognitive neuroscience: A critical bridge
Studying intellectual disabilities: Vanderbilt's legacy of brain science
Animal brains: Models of the human condition The brain on trial: The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience
More: A multidisciplinary approach: The Vanderbilt Brain Institute Psychopharmacology: Molecules of the
mind fMRI: Watching the brain in action Cognitive neuroscience: A critical bridge
Studying intellectual disabilities: Vanderbilt's legacy of brain science
Animal brains: Models of the human condition The brain on trial: The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience
More: A multidisciplinary approach: The Vanderbilt Brain Institute Psychopharmacology: Molecules of the
mind fMRI: Watching the brain in action
Studying intellectual disabilities: Vanderbilt's legacy of brain science
Animal brains: Models of the human condition The brain on trial: The MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience
The brain holds in
mind what has just been seen by synchronizing brain waves in a working memory circuit, an
animal study supported by the National Institutes of Health suggests.
We tried to keep an open
mind but some of the ideas we had — including an aberrant immune reaction — were beyond what we thought is amenable to
study in wildlife diseases, given that so much less is known about wildlife biology than human or laboratory
animal biology.
You may also want to look at a review article «Effects of Diet on Brain Plasticity in
Animal and Human
Studies:
Mind the Gap» by Tytus Murphy et al at King's College London published May 12 2014.
One of the questions behaviorists have been
studying in
animals for years is «Do they have a theory of
mind?»
Cats have a reputation for being hard to read - their
mind is a «black box» - and some
animal scientists have suggested that cats are just too challenging to even
study.
This sad incident was an awakening for the doctor, who switched his focus to ethology the
study of
animal minds.