🚀 go-pugleaf

connolly@rabbit.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly) writes:
Robert Murphree asks: where is the textbook?
>>
>>   "Everything you need to know about insect brains and locomotion to
>>     be a mobile roboticist"

>From what I can tell, there is a great deal more a) interest in, b)
>money for, and c) literature about mammalian nervous systems than
>insect nervous systems. 

>For instance, a recent issue of Neuroscience lists I think 2 or 3
>articles dealing with insects, out of about 20 total.  The rest are
>pretty much devoted to mammals (rats and cats, normally).  I haven't
>actually done article counts in other journals like Brain or J.
>Comparative Neurology, but at least in my wanderings, the majority
>seem to be devoted to mammalian CNS. This isn't surprising, since
>human neurological disorders are probably better studied through
>mammals than through insects.

As an ex-clinical technician who evaluated the causes of 
chronic dizziness, some of which were in the brain stem, no doubt
1) the mammalian CNS is of much more interest to neurologists than
bug brains.  2)  the mammalian CNS is much more interesting to 
biologists and people in general on purely intellectual, non-medical
terms.  

But my opinion is they don't really understand the brain, bugs or humans
very well anyway.  Bug behavior is simple enough that it seems to be
simulatable by modern control theory and computer hardware.  The same
cannot, in my opinion be said about anything vaguely mammalian.that
has to do with the brain or behaivor.   

A detailed model of cockroach neurons has already been used to simulate
mobility behavior and has direct application for hexapod mobility
(the mechanical sort of hexapod).   

So  with all due respect for the mammalian CNS
where's my "neurobiology of arthropods for roboticsts" textbook?