Natural Neuroscience: Toward a Systems Neuroscience of Natural Behaviors

by Nachum Ulanovsky

Genres: Science

302 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2025

Reviews

[Frederic · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very convincing and thought-provoking journey into studying the animal and human brain in more naturalistic environments. Because the author primarily studies bats, I leaned a lot about their neural codings of navigation (over 10km each night in Egyptian fruit bats) and social bondings in vampire bats. Truly fascinating stuff. Will come back for great citations that argue for a “both-and” — that is, lab and naturalistic — approach to understanding the brain.

[Will Redman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't realize how much this book's vision sunk into my subconscious until I started off calmly telling Alyssa about it and ended by screaming that if I saw another goddamn drifting orientation experiment I was going to lose it. Fortunately, she agrees. A lot of interesting summary of neuroscience results that don't get too much attention in system's neuro labs, which was especially damning when put one after another. My dog Chester could see I was fired up reading this, so he decided to help me study natural behavior by stealing the book and trying to eat it.