Birds: Brain and Behavior

Birds: Brain and Behavior

Edited by Irving J. Goodman and Martin W. Schein

Publisher: Academic Press, 1st ed., 1974

ISBN: 0-12-290350-1

273 pages

The present volume is an effort to contribute to the assessment, particularly with respect to birds. If we are to utilize efficiently the insights afforded by a comparative approach to brain-behavior problems, then the wealth of information presently available on mammals must be matched by comparable qualitative and quantitative information on other animals with functioning brains. Hence our concentration on birds, which are characterized by complex and well-integrated central nervous systems, but also by far more stereotyped behavioral repertoires than those exhibited by mammals.

The first section of the present volume deals with some theoretical and methodological questions involved in comparative studies of behavior and in brain-behavior relationships. These two areas of thought contain a number of ideas and viewpoints ranging from the controversial to the well accepted, and from the tenuously formulated to the moderately clear. Another section deals more directly with neuroanatomic information regarding sensory motor structure and connections. Some recent findings in this area have raised a number of questions about previous conceptualizations of avian neural organization. The last section examines and summarizes data pertaining to neural correlates or causes of various behavioral phenomena such as feeding, learning and memory, sleep, emotion, audition, vision, vocalization, and adaptation to various schedules of reinforcement.

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