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Full-Text Articles in Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Birds, Bats And Minds. Tales Of A Revolutionary Scientist: Donald R. Griffin. Volume One, Carolyn A. Ristau Feb 2024

Birds, Bats And Minds. Tales Of A Revolutionary Scientist: Donald R. Griffin. Volume One, Carolyn A. Ristau

eBooks

In this three-volume biography, we revisit the life and accomplishments of the revolutionary scientist, Donald R. Griffin. He encountered a lifetime of initial hostile resistance to his ideas and studies; now they are largely accepted. He and a colleague discovered the phenomenon of echolocation used by bats to navigate and capture insects, proposed that birds navigate guided by such cues as the sun and stars, and suggested that animals are likely aware, thinking and feeling beings. Forty interviews with his colleagues and friends help us understand the young emerging scientist and the mature researcher. We learn about his and others’ …


Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley Jan 2018

Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán’s depiction of the opponent of animal suicide as a conservative is a straw man. It is possible to accept that animals are self-conscious and reflexive yet still reject the view that they have the mental wherewithal to commit run-of-the-mill suicide. That animal behaviour can be positioned on a continuum of self-destructive behaviour does not establish that animals can intentionally kill themselves.


Animals Aren’T Persons, But Is It Time For A Neologism?, Helen Steward Dec 2016

Animals Aren’T Persons, But Is It Time For A Neologism?, Helen Steward

Animal Sentience

Mark Rowlands argues that at least some animals are persons, based on the idea that (i) many animals have a property he calls “pre-reflective awareness,” (ii) the capacity for pre-reflective awareness is sufficient to satisfy the traditional Lockean definition of personhood, and (iii) satisfaction of the traditional Lockean definition of personhood is sufficient for being a person. I agree with (i) and can see that there is a persuasive case for (ii), but I think the case against (iii) blocks the conclusion that animals are persons. I suggest that we may need instead to coin a neologism in order to …


Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro Nov 2016

Unconscious Higher-Order Thoughts (Hots) As Pre-Reflective Self-Awareness?, Rocco J. Gennaro

Animal Sentience

Rowlands argues that many nonhuman animals are “persons,” contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy which rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. He argues that self-awareness bifurcates into two importantly different forms — reflective self-awareness and pre-reflective self-awareness — and that many animals can have the latter, which is sufficient for personhood. I agree that there is good reason to think that many animals can have pre-reflective self-awareness, but I think Rowlands is mistaken about its nature. His account runs the risk of leading to an infinite regress objection, and his notion of pre-reflective self-awareness …


Are Animals Persons?, Mark Rowlands Jul 2016

Are Animals Persons?, Mark Rowlands

Animal Sentience

It is orthodox to suppose that very few, if any, nonhuman animals are persons. The category “person” is restricted to self-aware creatures: humans (above a certain age) and possibly some of the great apes and cetaceans. I argue that this orthodoxy should be rejected, because it rests on a mistaken conception of the kind of self-awareness relevant to personhood. Replacing this with a sense of self-awareness that is relevant requires us to accept that personhood is much more widely distributed through the animal kingdom.


A Model Of Intracellular Θ Phase Precession Dependent On Intrinsic Subthreshold Membrane Currents., L Stan Leung Aug 2011

A Model Of Intracellular Θ Phase Precession Dependent On Intrinsic Subthreshold Membrane Currents., L Stan Leung

Physiology and Pharmacology Publications

A hippocampal place cell fires at an increasingly earlier phase in relation to the extracellular theta rhythm as a rodent moves through the place field. The present report presents a compartment model of a CA1 pyramidal cell that explains the increase in amplitude and the phase precession of intracellular theta oscillations, with the assumption that the cell receives an asymmetric ramp depolarization (<10 >mV) in the place field and rhythmic inhibitory and/or excitatory synaptic driving. Intracellular subthreshold membrane potential oscillations (MPOs) increase in amplitude and frequency, and show phase precession within the place field. Theta phase precession and MPO power …