Year: 1989
Type: article
Abstract: The function of the nervous system is to enable a multicellular organism to keep in adaptive contact with its environment. This task has a number of requirements which apply generally to all free-living animals: Such animals must be able to discriminate dangerous places from safe places and dangerous objects from safe objects. They must be able to identify sources of food and to discriminate inedible from edible items, prior to ingesting any quantity of the latter. Almost all multicellular animals reproduce sexually (some also reproduce asexually) and must therefore be able to identify appropriate sexual partners, engage in appropriate reproductive behaviors, and, in one way or another, facilitate the union of sperm with egg. To succeed in all these areas, it is necessary that animals locomote through their habitat, which requires neural regulation of propulsive forces and of equilibrium under gravity within the reactive forces of a flowing medium and over solid surfaces of support. In addition, locomotion involves the ability to select and maintain appropriate paths through a cluttered, complex world. All of the just-mentioned skills require a further capacity—the ability to seek out and to detect relevant sources of information about the current state of the environment. It is not enough that an animal respond to stimuli imposed on it: To function adaptively, animals must actively obtain information relevant to their immediate and (at least) near-future circumstances. All these capacities, taken together, are the minimal functional requirements of any nervous system, even the simplest.
Source: Ecological Psychology
Author: Edward S. Reed
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1978140928