The topics covered include Perception, Action, Learning, Language, Knowledge Representation, and Inference, and the relations and interactions between such modules. The course shows how the different views from the parent disciplines interact, and identifies some common themes among the theories that have been proposed. The course pays particular attention to the distinctive role of computation in such theories, and provides an introduction to some of the main directions of current research in the field. This course seeks to understand what activates and arouses the behavior of animals. Examples from a variety of motivated behaviors will be discussed including feeding, sexual, maternal and food aversion behaviors.
Students consider the specifics of experiments and read original scientific papers.
Because the neural bases of these behaviors are a principal focus, students having had Psychology 109 are well prepared to take this course. This course provides an introduction to the analysis of animal behavior, and the neurobiological basis of behavior. Emphasis is on the sensory mechanisms by which the brain and nervous system obtain the information that is essential to natural behavior, such as communication during sexual behavior, and spatial orientation during prey capture or migration. BIBB 109 or BIOL 101 and 102, or permission of the instructor. This course describes the nature of human language, how it is used to speak and comprehend, and how it is learned.