The ability to establish behaviorally what psychological capacity an animal is deploying—to
discern accurately what an animal is doing—is key to functional analyses of the brain. Our …

We discuss how cybernetic principles of feedback control, used to explain sensorimotor
behavior, can be extended to provide a foundation for understanding cognition. In particular …

There are ever more compelling tools available for neuroscience research, ranging from
selective genetic targeting to optogenetic circuit control to mapping whole connectomes …

In the past few years, advances in machine learning have fueled an explosive growth of
descriptive and generative models of animal behavior. These new approaches offer higher …

Studies of mechanisms of adaptive behavior generally focus on neurons and circuits. But
adaptive behavior also depends on interactions among the nervous system, body and …

The neural bases of behavior are often discussed in terms of perceptual, cognitive, and
motor stages, defined within an information processing framework that was originally …

In studying brain activity during the behavior of living animals, it is not possible
simultaneously to analyze all levels of control from molecular events to motor responses. To …

Highlights•Behavioral reinforcement is neural reinforcement.•We propose a framework
where reinforcement acts on neural population dynamics with different time courses.• …

Animals acquire behaviors through instrumental conditioning. Brain-machine interfaces
have used instrumental conditioning to reinforce patterns of neural activity directly …

Highlights•Mechanistic understanding of the brain requires assigning functions to neural
modules.•New sophisticated tools for manipulating neural activity advance this …