Psychobiology???

In less than two weeks I am supposed to do a presentation on "Neuropsychologische Aspekte von Aufmerksamkeit, Bewußtsein" (Neuropsychological Aspects of Attention and Consciousness) in my Biopsychology Seminar. But even before then I got quite interested in how different parts of the brain work, so I went into the library and the only book in English that was actually an introductory book happened to be from 1973. I didn't think much of it and sat reading it on the train home. Man - I mean may be the concept of ethics is a totally new thing, but I was somewhat fascinated and shocked by the kind of experiments scientists used to do back in the 1920s or 1940s.

A lot of scientists were interested in how the brain works, and what do different parts do - how they interact with each other, etc. So naturally the way they went about doing it, is simply by removing various parts of the brain in various animals (mainly rats), and then sit back and look at what happens. Here are some great examples:

So here they've basically chopped out part of the rats brain and worked out that this was the reason it couldn't stop itself eating and hence got so fat. Looks kinda cute and fluffy actually - in a morbid kinda way. But then they say that the same effect can be achieved by feeding the rat Aurothioglucose... I mean - what was the point of chopping the poor things' brain?!! Then of course it goes to describe what brain waves starving or overweight rats have... or ones that they've refused to give water to for days on end. hmmmm...

Here "the bare tip of an otherwise insulated wire is inserted into the target brain area (hypothalamus), and after the animal has fully recovered from anesthesia a tiny current is passed through the wire... this procedure elicits various types of agonistic behaviour in cats"... yeah no sh!t - the poor thing has a wire stuck in its brain and is being zapped... I'd be pretty pissed off too!!!

And this one... I actually kind of found the idea behind the experiment quite interesting. That if both animals are experiencing the same sort of negative impact from whichever source, that their immediate reaction is to assume that it's the other entitiy. I wonder if this experiment would be replicatable on humans. Although I would think that people might actually talk to each other and work out that neither of them is responsible for it.... who knows. But just the idea of it... I mean how does one come up with an experimental setup like this??? "Ah yes... I'd like to test how agonistic behaviour comes about - right! Of course I'm just going to put two animals in a cage and electrify the floor - brilliant!" I mean right now I have no other suggestion, but I still think it's cruel, and from what I can gather - they didn't actually get all that much out of these experiments.

Dunno... I was just fascinated by this and here's something from Wikipedia "Animal testing or animal research refers to the use of animals in experiments. It is estimated that 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals worldwide — from zebrafish to non-human primates — are used annually and either killed during the experiments or subsequently euthanized. " and also this: "In the U.S. in 2004, 615,000 vertebrate animals (not including rats and mice) were used in procedures that did not include more than momentary pain or distress, according to their Animal Care Committees. Around 399,000 were used in procedures in which pain or distress was relieved by anesthesia, while 87,000 were used in studies in which researchers planned to cause pain or distress that would not be relieved." hmmm... something to think about.