Cutting Edge Lecture in Science:Dissecting the components of animal behaviour as a window into the human mind.

Dissecting the components of animal behaviour as a window into the human mind.  By Yogita Chudasama (Assistant Professor, McGill Psychology)

So much of our understanding of basic sensory and motor functions of the brain has derived from research in animals.  Recently, the use of experimental animals has been extended to study more complex aspects of cognition, such as planning and organisation, behavioural control and decision-making. How far can animal models inform us of the complex features of human cognition?  While the specific behaviours of different species diverge from humans in obvious ways (consider for example, the subterranean lifestyle of a rat), their brains have the same basic circuitry, raising the possibility that they support analogous cognitive operations. In this lecture, I will discuss how neuroscientists have been able to successfully exploit a conceptual framework, derived from research in human experimental psychology, which decomposes cognition into its basic building blocks.  I will present evidence that many of these cognitive components are surprisingly human-like in experimental animals as diverse as nonhuman primates and rodents. Finally, I will argue that the combination of careful behavioural testing and targeted manipulation of specific circuits in the brain of experimental animals is presently our most effective means for understanding the basic neural elements of human cognition.  These elements, whose neural bases are only now being discovered, are perturbed in common human brain disorders that involve emotional dysregulation, cognitive dysfunction, and even psychoses.