Deciphering neural mechanisms underlying natural behavior

Abstract

The brain allows animals to successfully interact with the world through behavior. But how does the brain compose natural behaviors — the kinds of behaviors that are expressed by animals when they are unrestrained and free to act based upon their own motivations? And how do sex, age, internal state, individual identity coalesce into a context-appropriate pattern of behavior at any given moment? Here I describe recent developments in computational ethology, and highlight how these emerging approaches can shed new light on how the brain endows natural behavior with meaning.