What do we owe each other?
What kind of neuroscience research do I owe the institution? The neuroscience field? Society?
I consider myself a fundamental neuroscience student but for the sake of my PhD thesis, I study vision in fish and the first question I always get about my research is “why fish?” The short answer is why not? A slightly longer, pragmatic answer might be, because those are the model organisms my supervisor works on so by proxy that’s what I’ve come to study. The long answer is, however, my favourite.
Animal research has greatly contributed to our most crucial medical advances from vaccinations to the development of almost all drugs and novel diagnostic tools. It’s also simply not always feasible or meaningful to perform scientific experiments on humans or on tissue grown in a dish.
This all leads us to the continued use of animals for biological research of all kinds, including the field of neuroscience. Though neuroscience research, like in other biological fields, overwhelmingly makes use of mice as the resident ‘lab rats’, all kinds of species from small worms like C. elegans to primates, find their way into research projects. Research into different species provides different perspectives and provide simplicity or complexity in regards to their structure and function. For example, though there is still much to learn, scientists have mapped virtually all of the neurons (cells that make up the brain and the rest of the nervous system) and their connections in the C. elegans (a worm) nervous system: a great tool for future research.
Of course, somewhere in the mix lies the fish. Historically, fish have offered up many bounties for visual neuroscience research. In fact, some of the first recordings of electrical activity driven by light were recorded from fish in 1953. Coincidentally, I record from these same cells, day-to-day in the lab. Subsequent advances continue to be made in this model with regard to visual anatomy and function. You still might be asking though, wouldn’t a mammal (an animal that gives live birth) have more similar eyes to humans for the sake of medical advancements?
Like the rock-and-roll-vibes exuded by Harvard Professor Dr. Florian Engert when he once said at a conference I attended, “What if I don’t care about curing a disease?” Believe me, the room’s subsequent “oooooohhhhs” would have made the hair on the back of your neck stick up from excitement. I also believe in the argument that science can be done for the pure sake of new knowledge. However, I would add that there is a lot to be gained by learning from a diverse group of species, and not even just when accidentally studying molds, like how penicillin was discovered.
Thanks to evolution and the fact that as one university professor once taught me, “we are just fish that learned to walk on land”, when we look at the neurons in the retina (the light-sensitive part at the back of the eye) in a fish, we find that a lot has been maintained across species. This allows us to study aspects of vision that are found in all vertebrates (animals with a spinal cord) including us.
This, however, doesn’t mean that we can simply translate all scientific findings back to humans. Different species offer up different benefits, whether they are of genetic or functional relevance. It is the knowledge gained from many species which often leads to the most holistic understanding of a system that could drive subsequent breakthroughs.
Art by Julie Ryu MSc. For more illustrations visit her blog, 10xobjective.
