Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience research aims to understand the structure and function of the brain. This work is often undertaken within the context of behaving organisms. Drawing from Pavlovian fear conditioning to abstract multistep decision paradigms, no shortage of tasks exists. Any single study may not have the intention of translation or comparison across species, but translational or comparative implications are frequently drawn without consideration for the methodological differences and related limitations. For example, findings derived from Pavlovian fear conditioning experiments serve as the foundation for the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders despite the methodological disparities in experimental protocols conducted in non-human animals versus humans. To bridge this divide, a comparative approach is necessary, where consideration of the intrinsic methodological differences is addressed. This chapter will provide a brief history of a task that has been used to study learning and memory in both humans and non-human animals: conditional associative learning. To facilitate comparative neurophysiology, empirical considerations of cross-species methodologies will be outlined. In short, this chapter will provide practical considerations for a comparative approach to facilitate both novel insight and discovery in the fields of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience and aid in the translation of findings across species.
