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Hi everyone, my name is Kara and I am a psychology senior at Haverford. I am from Washington State and am planning on applying to veterinary school in the future after a year or two off to gain more experience in the field. The majority of my experience in neural and behavioral research centers on pain perception and how pain perception can alter social behaviors such as affiliation and approach, which is the main focus of my thesis with Wendy Sternberg, Alex and Amelia. I have also always had some interest in hormone regulation and its effects on behavior, also a part of our thesis.

After our discussion last Tuesday I found myself particularly drawn to continuing a discussion on the use of animal models versus human models in psychological research. Certainly the ethics of this question is one which is very interesting, whether it is right to allow types of research on animals which we would invariably not allow in humans, and the fact that the vast majority of the research that I have been involved in uses animals as subjects, but that wanting to be a veterinarian clearly puts me in a place in which I do not feel that animal life is in any way "expendable" makes this question interesting to me. I think that those of us who do use animals in our research should not shy away from a discussion of this issue but should embrace the opportunity to really question and solidify our views. However, besides the morality of animal research, I think the question of whether animal research is truly generalizable to human conditions or human mental processes is fascinating. I myself feel that in most ways it is, but I would be really interested to hear other people's opinions about this dimension of the validity of animal models in psychological research. It would be especially interesting to me to hear from some of the biology majors about this point, as I have thought about whether studying animal behavior can be extrapolated to the human mental condition, but don't really have a good idea of if the differences between biological processes in animals and humans provide a challange in neurobiological research.

Part of why I think neural and behavioral research is important is the knowledge that we gain about the cognitive and emotional capabilities of animals. Obviously this is mostly because my interests lie in veterinary medicine, but having been around veterinary practices I find that learning more about what environmental or social factors could possibly affect an animal's well being or medical care experience could drastically improve veterinary medicine.