Animal Testing Perspective

The cameraman and I were pretty surprised when Professor Peter Janssen greeted us at Leuven university hospital reception. We were expecting someone… well we weren’t expecting Peter. On one hand he’s a relaxed straight-talking family man, on the other he has already published a long list of neurological research alongside some heavy-duty medical qualifications and awards.

Today he works in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the Leuven Research Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders, researching depth perception. He uses macaque monkeys to understand which parts of the brain control the comprehension of depth and ability to carry out those tasks.

Over the coming weeks, I will be publishing short excerpts from this interview, which will cover the life of a research monkey, common misconceptions, ethics etc. But for this post, let’s start with the basic of all questions.

“Why is brain research even necessary?