Do you ever wonder what your dog is thinking when you talk to her, and she cocks her head and looks at you with the saddest eyes you have ever seen? Or what is going on in your cat’s head while you scratch its chin and it purrs. And what could those birds be thinking when they swoop in front of the car you are driving? It wasn’t too long ago that scientists considered conscious thought to be an exclusively human attribute. Today, however, a growing body of research suggests that nonhuman animals exhibit varying degrees of conscious-like behavior, from planning for the future and memorizing previous events, to considering the thoughts of — and deliberately misleading — other members of their species. Which brings us to a really big question: What is consciousness, anyway?

In the 1970s, Donald Griffin, Ph.D., published a book, The Question of Animal Awareness, which challenged the times’ orthodoxy, that animals were “blindly reacting to stimuli and had nothing to do with mind, desire, purpose, awareness, thinking, and consciousness.” Around the same time, neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga and cognitive psychologist George Miller coined the phrase “cognitive neuroscience” to describe a new scientific discipline investigating how the human brain gives rise to the mind. Since then, scientists have found that the brains and minds of humans and nonhuman animals have fascinating similarities as well as differences.

The program features a segment about the work of experimental psychologist Nicola S. Clayton, which shows that scrub jays plan for the future and have a sense of what is going on in the minds of other birds. The piece will facilitate a discussion about the scientific method, demonstrating, in the process, how and why rigorous standards, and the ability to replicate results, are necessary to prove what may seem obvious to a layperson.
The broadcast window for the series is October 15, 2009 - March 31, 2010.
Go deeper http://www.stations.trbq.org
Station Contact: Ms Stevie Beck, stevie@SchardtMEDIA.org 612.825.6363

Do you ever wonder what your dog is thinking when you talk to her, and she cocks her head and looks at you with the saddest eyes you have ever seen? Or what is going on in your cat’s head while you scratch its chin and it purrs. And what could those birds be thinking when they swoop in front of the car you are driving? It wasn’t too long ago that scientists considered conscious thought to be an exclusively human attribute. Today, however, a growing body of research suggests that nonhuman animals exhibit varying degrees of conscious-like behavior, from planning for the future and memorizing previous events, to considering the thoughts of — and deliberately misleading — other members of their species. Which brings us to a really big question: What is consciousness, anyway?

In the 1970s, Donald Griffin, Ph.D., published a book, The Question of Animal Awareness, which challenged the times’ orthodoxy, that animals were “blindly reacting to stimuli and had nothing to do with mind, desire, purpose, awareness, thinking, and consciousness.” Around the same time, neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga and cognitive psychologist George Miller coined the phrase “cognitive neuroscience” to describe a new scientific discipline investigating how the human brain gives rise to the mind. Since then, scientists have found that the brains and minds of humans and nonhuman animals have fascinating similarities as well as differences.

The program features a segment about the work of experimental psychologist Nicola S. Clayton, which shows that scrub jays plan for the future and have a sense of what is going on in the minds of other birds. The piece will facilitate a discussion about the scientific method, demonstrating, in the process, how and why rigorous standards, and the ability to replicate results, are necessary to prove what may seem obvious to a layperson.
The broadcast window for the series is October 15, 2009 - March 31, 2010.
Go deeper http://www.stations.trbq.org
Station Contact: Ms Stevie Beck, stevie@SchardtMEDIA.org 612.825.6363