The Future of Behaviour

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Neuroscientist Mackenzie Mathis at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne debuted an open source motion tracking software package called Deep Lab Cut. The computing power and analytical techniques needed to record, automatically track and catalogue hours of behaviour have become available only in the past 5 years. Some discoveries question long held ideas about why animals behave the way they do.

Neuroscientists are creating more naturalistic experiments that they hope will provide a more nuanced understanding of animal — and human — behaviour.

These set-ups differ from the classic laboratory experiments that have been used for decades, and may help in the understanding of behaviours such as escaping a predator or finding scarce food. By studying these natural actions, scientists are hoping to glean lessons about the brain and behaviour that are more holistic and more relevant to everyday activity than ever before.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Lab mice go wild: making experiments more natural in order to decode the brain

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