Anecdotally, it’s difficult to watch some of the more intelligent animals navigating the world or interacting with one another without concluding that they have emotions. However, empirically studying whether or not that’s true has proven difficult, as finding a definitive answer to a big philosophical question by means of lab experiments is not an easy task. While there’s growing evidence that primates and some other vertebrates have emotional states, researchers debate whether the same is true for animals further removed from humans, such as octopuses, and also debate what it means to have an emotional state versus an internal feeling in the first place. “I think it’s easier for people to say, ‘Oh, my dog has emotions,’ but harder for people to recognize emotions in a crab, for instance. It’s a very automatic response,” University of York philosopher Kristin Andrews tells The Scientist. “But then you have to be careful ...
Our Favorite Neuroscience Stories of 2022
This year, neuroscience researchers made important discoveries related to how neurodegeneration attacks the human brain, hooked cultured neurons up to machinery to teach them to play a video game, and more.
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Dan is an award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles who joined The Scientist as a reporter and editor in 2021. Ironically, Dan’s undergraduate degree and brief career in neuroscience inspired him to write about research rather than conduct it, culminating in him earning a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University in 2017. In 2018, an Undark feature Dan and colleagues began at NYU on a questionable drug approval decision at the FDA won first place in the student category of the Association of Health Care Journalists' Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. Now, Dan writes and edits stories on all aspects of the life sciences for the online news desk, and he oversees the “The Literature” and “Modus Operandi” sections of the monthly TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. Read more of his work at danrobitzski.com.
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