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Behavioral Neurobiology: The Cellular Organization of Natural Behavior

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With few exceptions the fields of neurobiology, ethology, and animal learning proceed in parallel in the academy, practitioners toiling productively in their respective fields but too rarely taking the time to exchange findings with people who share their questions if not their methods. This book builds wonderful, enlightening bridges between these disciplines, and in the process provides explanations for fascinating phenomena that cannot be fully understood at just one level of analysis. How, for example, does an owl know where in space the sound of a mouse scrabbling through leaves originates? How do bats manage to extract auditory images of the world precise enough to catch mosquitos on the fly? How do songbirds learn to sing just the right song in a world full of other birds singing other songs? These and many other specific questions are answered in ways that illuminate more general principles about how brains work so that by the end of the book one has a very strong sense of the possibility that the complexity of behavior in all its forms really can be brought into focus and explained in ways that are very satisfying. Given the technical nature of much of the basic research this is a very manageable read, although some prior background in one or more of the relevant disciplines makes the experience that much more rewarding. It's technically a text book, but it's a great read.