Meeting Abstract
A long-standing question in biology is what are the mechanisms that shape the evolution of cognition? One effective way to address this question is to study cognitive abilities in a broad spectrum of animals. While comparative psychologists have traditionally focused on a narrow range of organisms, today they may work with lizards, birds, or bees. This broader range of study species has greatly enriched our understanding of the diversity of cognitive processes among animals. Yet, this diversity has highlighted the fundamental challenge of comparing cognitive processes across animals. An analysis of the neural and molecular mechanisms of cognition may be necessary to solve this problem. For example, if similar cognitive abilities are mediated by different neurobiological mechanisms, this may support the conclusion that they are not, after all, comparable. Further, a mechanistic approach can inform how the evolution of cognitive abilities have been constrained at the neural, molecular, or genetic levels. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing enables one to study neurogenomic mechanisms of comparative cognition in a broader range of species providing a potentially powerful tool to create an integrative perspective of comparative cognition.
