Neuroethology is the combination of neuroscience-the study of brain structures-and ethnology-the study of animals to stimuli in their natural habitat. The discipline looks for the neural and mental structures which influence behavior as compared among differing organisms in the scope of evolution. In other words, how the evolutionary traits of animals directly affect their behavior. The science hones in on the physical systems responsible, as opposed to simply describing animal behaviors.

Konrad Lorenz, an Austrian born in 1903, is one of the early figures in the field. He proposed the existence of fixed action patterns-instinctive responses to stimuli which culminate in a series of actions. Niko Tinbergen, a Dutch scientist born in 1907, worked with Lorenz on fixed action patterns, and would later go on to develop four questions which he believed could explain the actions of organisms. The answers to these questions were Adaptation, Evolution, Causation, and Development.

Neurophysiologist Jörg-Peter Ewert, born in 1939 in present-day Poland, really pushed the field to where it is today. He studied the behaviors of European toads when presented with prey. He discovered which neural systems allow toads to differentiate between prey, non-prey, and predators. He did this by presenting toads with various stimuli and scrupulously noting what responses the toads gave. He then went on to map out the infrastructure between the eyes and brains of the toads, and isolated which systems in the toads' brains were responsible for which functions by triggering various regions electrically.

Ewert found that if he damaged a certain part of a toad's brain, it would have a prey-catching response to a stimulus which the toad would normally consider to be the sign of a predator. He also discovered that a specific part of the brain can learn about new prey that the toad is not familiar with-but if it is damaged, then this learning stops, and the brain falls back on instinctual cues.

Studying animals one by one is valuable to our knowledge about how the brain works, but neuroethology takes on a new dimension when scientists compare different animals. Studies are currently being done comparing the spatial memory of rodents and birds, the social skills among primates, the cognitive skills of honeybees, and eye and head movement in crustaceans and humans.

This field has direct medical applications, as many of the structures discovered in animals are also present in human neural networks.

However, the most exciting applications of neuroethology is in technology. Scientists can attach electrodes to the brains of animals to study the function of various systems. They can then select desirable features from the brains of animals and apply them to robots. Randall Beer, professor at Indiana University, has already accomplished this, applying the principles at play behind the locomotion of insects to build a robot which could walk on uneven surfaces.

Related Links: Science Biology Branches of Biology