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Ethogenesis
is a term coined by our lab to emphasize the unity in what are
traditionally viewed as three different questions in the study
of behavior. Niko Tinbergen and Jack Hailman, in 1964, independently
pointed out that behavioral research addresses four fundamental
questions:
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Causes |
Origins |
Individual |
Causation
(Tinbergen)
Control
(Hailman) |
Development
(Tinbergen)
Ontogeny
(Hailman) |
Population |
Function
(Tinbergen)
Perpetuation
(Hailman) |
Evolution
(Tinbergen)
Phylogeny
(Hailman) |
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This
scheme has contributed a great deal to the clear formulation
of research questions in ethology and comparative psychology.
But it also has obscured deep underlying connections between
these areas of inquiry. We are coming to appreciate, for
instance, the fact that behavior is not an entity such as
a bone or internal organ that has a continuous existence.
Each behavioral performance is unique and ephemeral, although
it may be recognizably similar to other performances in
the past or future. Behavior also is elaborated in time,
although we often treat individual behavioral acts as instantaneous
for research purposes. From these perspectives, the Causation
of behavior, which encompasses the physiological mechanisms
that produce behavior, also should be seen as a question
of Origins, because each behavioral act has a discrete birth,
life span and death, analogous to an individual or species. |
click to view movie clip |
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The
research objective of the Laboratory of Comparative Ethogenesis
is to understand the Origins of Behavior on these three
different time scales:
-
Real-Time
(the province of the nervous, hormonal and biomechanical
systems that generate behavior),
-
Developmental-Time
(the province of behavioral change that occurs within
a portion of the life span of an individual), and
-
Evolutionary-Time
(the province of behavioral change that takes place
over generations of individuals
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The
Laboratory of Comparative Ethogenesis is headed by
Dr. Scott R. Robinson, an ethologist and developmental psychobiologist.
Since 1982, Dr. Robinson has been engaged in a broad program
of research concerned with the prenatal origins of behavior
in the fetus. This research has sought evidence for the
temporal and spatial organization of motor behavior, the
prenatal expression of species-typical responses to sensory
stimulation, the capacity to learn in utero, and the biological
determinants of these abilities in rodent and sheep fetuses.
This research employs state-of-the-art techniques for gaining
experimental access to animal fetuses, manipulating neurochemical
receptors in the fetal nervous system, and assessing the
earliest forms of organization of behavior through quantitative
and video-based kinematic analyses of fetal and neonatal
movement. |
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