1.What will this course do for you?

• It will illustrate neurobehavior across phyla for its inherent interest as well as to suggest pathways of evolution of nervous systems.
  
• Knowing the neural basis of animal behavior is valuable to students of psychology, pre-medicine, physiology, ecology, population biology, and environmental biology.
  

2.Why is the course emphasis on invertebrates and lower vertebrates?

One answer is found in this article: Young, J.Z. (1976)
"Are invertebrate nervous systems a good model for the brain?" (handout). Young is famous for his behavioral, anatomical and physiological studies on the cephalopod nervous system. These animals, the squids and octopuses, have the most well developed brains among the nonvertebrate animals.

Examples from Young’s article:

• At the cellular level - squid giant axon - nature of the action potential
  
• At the level of higher processes - octopus learning and memory
  
  

An extreme view: Griffin, D.R. (1991) "Essay: Animal Thinking" (handout). Griffin did major work in developing understanding of bat echoranging and other important problems in animal behavior. His view of the nervous systems of lower forms however, goes beyond conventional scientific thought. He believes many of these simpler animals have "consciousness" much like ours — whatever that is. Throughout this course you might want to reflect on Griffin’s belief and consider how one might try to prove or falsify it.

In the previous paragraph the term "lower forms" was used. It is useful as a convenient way to describe many groups of animals ranking on the evolutionary tree below the vertebrates. On proceeding through the course you might reflect on whether or not this is good usage when you discover some of the elegant ways "simple" nervous systems solve the problems of life.