Resurrecting Lorenz's hydraulic model: Phlogiston explained by quantum mechanics

Abstract

Neuroethology, an interdisciplinary subdivision of neuroscience, has emerged in recent years. Since 1976 there has been a regular session under this heading at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. In 1980 two introductory texts in English were published on the subject (Ewert 1980;Guthrie 1980), and a third (Camhi 1984) was published recently. There is widespread interest in neural mechanisms underlying behavior, but they encompass such a vast array of often unrelated topics that proponents do not share common goals. This article describes the emergence of ethology as a discipline, pointing out that its practitioners were successful because they confined their research to stereotyped, complex, nonlearned, innate behavioral acts. A limited number of profoundly significant principles emerged. Each of these is redefined. The major concepts of earlier ethology were embodied in a simple hydraulic model used by Konrad Lorenz in 1949 (Lorenz 1950. It is pointed out that this model implies the existence of common neurophysiological mechanisms and neuronal circuitry. This model has now been made obsolete by neurophysiological progress, but with appropriate modifications an updated version may still be useful in focusing attention on possible principles. The initial aim of neuroethology should be to examine the neurophysiological events in a variety of behaviors, exhibited by diverse animals from different phyla, which meet the criteria of innate behavioral acts. The behaviors should be sufficiently complex to interest ethologists, yet they should be addressable with neurophysiological methods down to the cellular level. In the case of vertebrates this may mean working with brain slices as well as whole animals, but for some invertebrates recording should be possible in the nearly intact animal during execution of the behavior. The work will be exacting and very difficult, and it is not likely to get done at all unless neuroethologists recognize that they should both train and discipline themselves and restrict their attention to welldefined goals.Keywords: behavioral biology; behavior patterns; ethology; fixed action patterns (FAPs); instinct; learning; Lorenz; motor programs; neuroethology Historical origins of ethologyA scientific discipline of neuroethology could not have existed either before the term "ethology" had become established or before neuroscience had developed to the point where both neuroanatomical and neurophysiological methods were available that could be used to attack ethological questions. There is a strong tendency to equate neuroethology with the neural bases of behavior in the broadest sense. To do so encompasses such a broad spectrum of phenomena that the extremes are virtually unrelated and can only be linked by the widest stretches of imagination. Such links are too tenuous. If the term "neuroethology" is to serve the useful purpose of identifying a group of active scholar-investigators sharing common goals, to bring them together and stimulate their research, it must be...