Biological Basis of Behaviour Lecture 7 PDF

Lecture 7NavigationPSY2304Biological Basis of BehaviourTo h e a r t h e p r e s e n t a t i o n a s y o u g o t h r o u g h t h e s l i d e s , p l e a s e g o t o t h e S l i d e S h o w m e n u and click on “play from start”. You can also start from the slide you a...

Lecture 7NavigationPSY2304Biological Basis of BehaviourTo h e a r t h e p r e s e n t a t i o n a s y o u g o t h r o u g h t h e s l i d e s , p l e a s e g o t o t h e S l i d e S h o w m e n u and click on “play from start”. You can also start from the slide you are on using “play from current slide”. If you want subtitles, then click “always use subtitles”. Finally, you can just look at the slides without hearing me by using the up and down arrows after you open it.What I say in this presentation is either on the slides or in the notes that accompany them (see the notes page in PowerPoint on the View menu). Please click on the slide to advance after I’ve finished speaking or use the forward (and back) arrows to navigate. To-day’s questionHow do animals manage to find their way around?That is, how do they navigate?Some ways we can ask this question:•Learning -for example to distinguish one place from another –in online lecture•Memory –ability to learn about spatial cues and use the information later•More ecologically valid experiments looking at behaviour outside the lab Approach in this lecture•Focus on spatial navigation because–much evidence that spatial location is highly salient for many species–important in early development of ideas about animal cognition (Tolman’s “cognitive map”)–many recent investigations•Focus on memory because–recent evidence of exceptional ability in spatial memory–Intriguing neuropsychological data Terminology•Distal (long range) vs proximal (short range) cues•Egocentric (relative to the individual) vs allocentric (relative to the environment) frames of reference•Beacons (Pavlovian approach) vs landmarks (used as a reference) Spatial learning in the laboratory rat•If there is any way of solving a learning task by treating it as a spatial problem, that’s what a rat will do (“position effects”)•Rats can learn complex mazes, e.g. Hampton Court replica (Small, 1900)•Tolman et al’s (1946) “sunburst” maze seemed to show that rats have a sense of direction and can take a shortcut•…though only if there’s a “beacon” availabletraintest The hippocampus as a cognitive mapThere is good evidence that the hippocampus is involved in spatial learning, e.g.•O’Keefe and Nadel: single cell recording in the hippocampus shows “place cells” which fire when a rat is in a particular place in a maze•Hippocampal lesions disrupt performance in the Morris water maze Locomotion in an 8-arm mazeCorresponding firing pattern of one neurone (red=most intense) The Morris Water Maze: The apparatus looks like this (plan view). It's raised off the floor and open so that the animal can see around the room.PoolBlack curtainsPlatformABCDA -D are landmarks. PoolSThe rat is put in the pool at a random location along the side (S).ABCD PoolSIt then swims to the platform, at first in a roundabout fashion (thin line), later more directly (bold line). Animals with hippocampal lesions are impaired at this task, in that they take longer to find the platform and do not exhibit the ability to swim straight to it in the way that controls can.ABCD A virtual water mazeThe technique can be applied to humans as well… Navigation: What do you need to find your way around?•A map to specify the spatial relations of objects; cf. Tolman (1948), cognitive map to account for rats’ learning of mazes?•A compassto specify directions (orient the map; cf. Kramer (1953), map and compass account of bird navigation•A locatorto tell you where you currently are•Redundant systems so that if one is blocked you can still navigate Magnetic navigation:the Green Sea Turtle (Chelonia mydas)•Migrate 2000 km from feeding grounds on the Brazilian coast to nest sites on Ascension island•Thought to use orientation and intensity of earth’s magnetic field –a bearing map•Contributions of instinct and individual learning unclear Homing pigeonsUse multiple systems:•Sun compass (requires knowledge of time of day). Clock-shift experiments.•Magnetic compass•Infrasound (?) and other beacons•Olfaction (e.g. Guildford et al 1998)•Route marks e.g. motorways (Lipp et al 2004)•Proximal landmarks at start and end of flight (e.g. Biro et al, 2003)Must all be learned Adaptive influences on spatial learning: (i) scatter-hoarders•Scatter-hoarders make numerous (several thousand) caches of food and recover them months later•Often the look of the environment is different at cache time and recovery time (e.g. snow)•Caches cannot be marked (e.g. by scent) or they would be pilfered, so scatter hoarders need exceptional spatial memory•Examples: corvids (scrub jays, Clark’s nutcracker), sciurids (grey squirrel, fox squirrel), parids (marsh tit, coal tit)•Note not all members of same genera/families scatter hoard Experiments on scatter hoardersMacdonald (1997): –trained grey squirrels to find nuts she’d buried at random places in a 2m circle–visual signal when nuts would be present–squirrels could still recover nuts accurately 2 months later–decoy nuts buried at different distances from targets… if decoy was more than 2cm away, the squirrels always took the targetKrebs, Shettleworth & colleagues:–compare storing parids with non-storing species on spatial memory tasks –scatter hoarders do better (e.g. Krebs et al 1990)Kamil, Balda & colleagues:–series of experiments on Clark’s Nutcrackers, investigating what cues they use to find caches–e.g. Kamil & Jones (2000) conclude that birds can use both absolute and relative cues, and both distance and direction from landmarks, but direction is more salientClayton & colleagues:–many experiments on scrub jays showing that they remember what they have stored and when, as well as where (see previous lecture) The hippocampus and spatial memoryThe hippocampus is larger, relative to total brain size in:–Bird families that store food compared with families that don’t, and in scatter hoarding species than non-storing members of the same families (e.g. Krebs et al 1989)–Individual birds with experience of cache recovery than in inexperienced members of the same species (Clayton & Krebs, 1994)–Homing pigeons rather than other strains–London taxi-drivers than control subjects (Maguire et al, 2000). –The implication is that if you have a lot of stored spatial relations then your hippocampus will be larger. Reading and References•Required reading: Pearce Chapter 11 (3rd ed.) or Chapter 8 (2nd ed.)•Barnea, A. & Nottebohm, F. (1994). Seasonal recruitment of hippocampal neurons in adult free-ranging black-capped chickadees. Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences of the USA, 91, 11217-1122.•Biro, D., Guilford, T., & Dawkins, M. S. (2003). Mechanisms of visually mediated site recognition by the homing pigeon. Animal Behaviour, 65, 115-122.•Clayton, N. S., & Krebs, J. R. (1994). Hippocampal growth and attrition in birds affected by experience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 91, 7410-7414.•Gaulin, S. J. C., & Fitzgerald, R. W. (1989). Sexual selection for spatial-learning ability. Animal Behaviour, 37, 322-331.•Guilford, T., Gagliardo, A., Chappell, J., Bonadonna, F., De Perera, T. B., & Ho (1998). Homing pigeons use olfactory cues for navigation in England. Journal of Experimental Biology, 201, 895-900.•Jacobs, L. F., Gaulin, S. J. C., Sherry, D. F., & Hoffman, G. E. (1990). Evolution of spatial cognition -sex-specific patterns of spatial-behavior predict hippocampal size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 87, 6349-6352.•Jacobs, L. F., & Schenk, F. (2003). Unpacking the cognitive map: The parallel map theory of hippocampal function. Psychological Review, 110, 285-315.•Kamil, A. C., & Jones, J. E. (2000). Geometric rule learning by Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 26, 439-453.•Kramer, G. (1953). Wird die Sonnenhohe bei der Heimfindeorientierung verwendet? Journal fuer Ornithologie, 94, 201-219.•Krebs, J. R., Healy, S. D., & Shettleworth, S. J. (1990). Spatial memory of Paridae: comparison of a storing and a non-storing species, the coal tit, Parus ater, and the great tit, P. major. Animal Behaviour, 39, 1127-1137.•Krebs, J. R., Sherry, D. F., Healey, S. D., Perry, V. H., & Vaccariono, A. L. (1989). Hippocampal specializations of food-storing birds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 86, 1388-1392. References continued...•Lipp, H., Vyssotski, A. L., Wolfer, D. P., Renaudineau, S., Savini, M., Tröster, (2004). Pigeon homing along highways and exits. Current Biology, 14, 1239-1249.•Macdonald, I. M. V. (1997). Field experiments on duration and precision of grey and red squirrel spatial memory. Animal Behaviour, 54, 879-891.•Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Fra (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97, 4398-4403.•Morris, R. G. M. (1984). Development of a water maze procedure for studying spatial learning in the rat. Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 11, 47-60.•O'Keefe, J., & Nadel, L. (1978). The hippocampus as a cognitive map. Oxford: Oxford University Press.•Sherry, D. F., Forbes, M. R. L., Khurgel, M., & Ivy, G. O. (1993). Females have a larger hippocampus than males in the brood-parasitic brown-headed cowbird. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 90, 7839-7843.•Small, W. S. (1900). An experimental study of the mental processes of the rat. American Journal of Psychology, 11, 133-165.•Tolman, E. C. (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review, 55, 189-208.•Tolman, E. C., Ritchie, B. F., & Kalish, D. (1946). Studies in spatial learning: II. Place learning versus response learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37,385-392.