Friday, February 21, 2014

Drugs and the Brain, and Animal Intelligence

During this unit, we also discussed the effect of various drugs on the brain. Here are some interesting animations showing the effect of alcohol and other drugs on neurotransmission.

And we talked about the brains and nervous systems of animals; how they differ from and are similar to our own.

We loved this video of a smart crow doing a multi-part puzzle!

And thought these NOVA movies were interesting too (with the usual caveats; NOVA always has a tendency towards sensationalism):

How smart are animals? 
What are animals thinking?

We especially liked the part in the second video where it shows evidence of altruistic behavior in mice and monkeys. Fascinating!

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