Abstract
No animal can fight, go to sleep, run away, and make love all at once. We have therefore listed mutually incompatible modes of vertebrate behavior as follows:
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1.
sleep
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2.
eat
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3.
drink
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4.
fight
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5.
flee
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6.
hunt (prey or fodder)
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7.
search (curiosity)
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8.
urinate
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9.
defecate
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10.
groom
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11.
engage in sex
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12.
lay eggs or give birth
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13.
suckle or hatch
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14.
build nests
Possibly, also:
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15.
migrate
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16.
hibernate
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17.
engage in certain special forms of instinctive behavior
Some may challenge this classification, but the important thing is that there will never be more than, say, 25 modes. An animal is said to be in a mode if the main focus of attention throughout his central nervous system (CNS) is on doing the things of that mode. We hypothesize that the core of the reticular formation (RF) is the structure in vertebrates that commits the animal to one or another mode of behavior (Fig. 1).
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Kilmer, W., McCulloch, W.S. (1969). The Reticular Formation Command and Control System. In: Leibovic, K.N. (eds) Information Processing in The Nervous System. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-25549-0_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-25549-0_16
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