What themes unify neurobiology?
A unifying theme in neurobiology is how nervous systems generate behavior. Neurobiologists commonly study animals that have exaggerated or specialized sensory, motor or behavioral capacities in order to learn about some aspect of neural function common to all complex animals including rats and humans. Information from such analyses lets us compare neural mechanisms used by quite different animals to determine how they meet similar behavioral challenges such as locomotion, predation, feeding, reproduction, defense, aggression and escape. How diverse is the field of neurobiology? Studies range from the investigation of sensory, neural and motor function in the context of whole animal behavior to the analysis of behaviorally significant activities of single nerve cells and small neural networks, including developmental aspects of both. Topics include specialized sensory, motor and central neural systems. For example, neurobiologists might study: • central visual and auditory neural system
