I would like to thank Andrea Chiba for reminding us just how important it is to test our assumptions about the experimental paradigm. Although I do not perform any behavioral research with laboratory animals, it was still interesting to learn just how easily an experiment could be compromised by a flawed setup and thus how important it is to remember that results are only as good as the methodology they are based upon.

I thought it was an insightful and engaging talk. In particular, it was interesting to see the way experiments were set up for rats and how very small details could make a difference and had to be taken into consideration (i.e. importance of experiment design).

Andrea is one of the most careful scientists I know. Now you can see why she has never had to re-submit a grant! (They always get funded first time!)
I learned a lot at this talk about preconceived notions about experiments and animals. Some of the design issues just seemed rather obvious (that the researchers missed - lots of ways the rat could navigate based on clues left around the lab). The one that struck me the most was the one where someone turned down the lights, thinking that would make the rat more likely to not be able to see well, when in fact, that is optimal for rat vision.
It was good to see how much researchers become fixated on certain areas of the brain, ignoring many other regions that could encode space.

I thought Andrea's lecture was a great overview of the research on rodents in spatial cognition. I was surprised that there are still so many design issues in a task that is used so frequently. I was impressed by the design of some of the tasks that she uses in her lab - especially the one that tries to model the natural environment of the rat by having a number of "dark holes" where the rat can hide.

I found really interesting what Andrea had to say about behavioral neuroscience’s concepts of working vs. reference memory relative to the distinction between episodic and semantic memory in research on human memory. It sounded like there is a concern with applying concepts from the study of human cognition to animal cognition. Is this an indication of a latent behaviorism in behavioral neuroscience? Is the reason that episodic memory is characterized in terms of its phenomenology (the experience of recalling a particular episode) rather than simply its functional role (using information about specific events from the past)?

Drawing on what Mitch mentioned above, one of the questions I took away from Andrea's talk concerned the comparisons between rat (or other mammal) cognition and human cognition. There are obviously many things to be said in general about mammalian cognition, but there must also be a few significant differences. I would be interested in what correspondences exist, both in terms of structure and function. For example, how similar are the rat and human hippocampus? As Andrea mentioned, for a while most work in this area was primarily concerned with the hippocampus. What conclusions can be drawn across species, and where does extra care need to be taken before making human statements from rat results?

I'm fascinated by how it is that researchers end up committing the kind of errors that Andrea highlighted in her talk. At least the way she explains it, the mistakes are "obvious" once seen, but most of the examples Andrea mentioned took an outside observer to diagnose the problem. Are these errors particular to spatial memory research? To rodent research? Or perhaps it's because scientists so frequently tend toward operating by "turning a scientific crank", producing results by more or less blindly permuting variables in a respected, established, and effective scientific paradigm. If it's the latter, a kind of not-seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees problem, then it likely extends far beyond spatial memory research.

On the subject of assumptions, I appreciate Adam's comments about understanding the limits in comparing rat and human brains and behavior. As I understand it, there are profound similarities, in structure and function, between rat and human brains. The greatest difference lies in the degree of complexity. Since primates' visual systems are much more complex than rodents', how does that factor in to spatial cognition research with rats? Andrea's talk made me think about our evolutionary heritage, and what is common ground with our mammal relatives. In particular, her analogy between the water maze and the Micronesian navigators' star map made me think about how human biology and culture have elaborated on basic mammalian abilities.

Today I had the opportunity to ask Andrea Chiba about comparing rat and human brains, and the limits to what we can infer about one from the other.
Andrea had a lot to say... There is significant anatomical homology between rats, primates, and humans, although there is disproportionate differentiation of cortical regions among species. In addition, one of the most obvious distinctions is the proportion of cortical and subcortical volumes. The rat has less cortex—they are more automated and less thoughtful than humans. Rats have superior spatial navigation skills however. Maybe we could invite Andrea back to join one of our discussions, particularly if people have more questions to ask her.