Insect Minds For Human Minds

摘要: Although great progress has been made, nobody will deny that we are far from understanding even the basic rules governing the machinery of the human mind. Under these conditions, any approach that promises to help unravel the mysteries of mind–brain connections is welcome. Mice brains are cut into thin slices, or neurons are placed in cell culture to study the molecular and cellular components of neurons and their communication. Brains are recorded with EEG electrodes or imaged with fMRI methods, although both approaches work only for distant signals from the neuronal nets. Ideally, one would like to measure the working of neurons embedded in an animal brain (or, even better: a human brain) while the brain performs normally, responding to stimuli, recruiting memory, and learning—in short, behaving as it does in normal life. There is no such ideal case. The unavoidable compromises, due to the complexity of the brain machinery and the lack of appropriate methods, are severe. The limited methods imposed on current neuroscience favor an additional approach, namely comparative neuroscience. Animals come with all kinds of brain organizations, and some of them are more suitable for today’s methodology because they provide us with a smaller number of neurons, larger neurons, more robust behavior under recording conditions, and less complex behavior. Some of these animal species are even accessible to the most sophisticated armory of molecular–genetic tools. Since none of these animal species combines all of the favorable conditions, the best solution is to take advantage of all of them. Comparative cognitive …