Habituation

How to define learning?

'“change in behaviour following experience” too broad

What a trivial examples of ‘learning’

Fatigue, disease, growth

How does Robert hind describe learning?

Changes that cannot be understood in terms of maturational growth processes in the nervous system,. fatigue and sensory deprivation

What is habituation?

AKA adaptation

• When animals stop responding to repeated stimuli

Who did work on habituation ?

Eric Kanel (Nobel prize 2k), sea slug

What does repeated stimulation do in nervous/neural terms?

• Less effective Ca2+ channels in synapse

• Decreased NT release

• Decreased firing rate

  Behaviour of simple neural network

What is sensitisation?

Simultaneous presentation of touch and shock

• Animal becomes highly sensitive to touch

• Network linked to that for habitation

What is an example of sensitisation naturally through a behavioural change?

Rat picking up ratling. Mother have strong care

• Rat exhibits maternal behaviour, but not until they are a mother

• Change in latency to pick up pups

• Sensitisation in response to pup odour

What is learning?

The strengthening o a synapse

What is the ‘engram’?

Physical basis of memory - is therefore patterns of synapses

What is the dunce mutation?

Dudai et al (1976)

• Affects learning and memory in shock experiment

• series of mutants with learning and memory deficiencies

  • couldn’t remember link between shock and odour

What insights into learning and memory fits in with apylsia data?

Behavioural, anatomical and biochemical

Where are olfactory memories stored in insect brain?

Mushroom bodies (the insect engram)

How was classical conditioning shown in the Blue gourami?

Males defend territories against other males

Experimentally conditioned males by announcing arrival of gravid females

Conditioned males

• Bite females less

• Build nests more

• Spawn quicker

• Produce more offspring

What are the benefits and advantages of learning>

• Fitness advantage

• Force for evolutionary change

• Behavioural adaptations

How is learning a force for evolutionary change? give a few examples

• aposematism

• associating colour with a foul taste

responses from birds are not hardwired

What is one trial learning?

After one stimulus organisms can learn response

What encourages certain kinds of learning? How does this make learning some things easier?

Constraints and preadaptation

• easy to link sound and shock, taste and nausea.

• strong selective pressure

What is operant conditioning?

Animal links behaviour with reward or punishment

• E.g. Skinner box

• This is more active, classical conditioning more passive (involuntary responses)

How are blue tits an example of operant conditioning?

Milk bottle lids - innovated pecking holes in caps and eating cream off top

• social learning - watched each other do it

What other species can operant learn?

• Honeybee - social learning widespread, not just in mammals and primates but insects

• Macaques - washed sweet potatoes left on beach by researchers

  • customer spread rapidly. Washing sweet potatoes in sea, spread through social networks

What is an example of chimp culture that is unecessary for fitness?

Chimps putting grass in their ears and wearing it.

• Is it like fashion, collective identity?

What is insight learning?

Using a tool to get something. Innovative learning.

• Kohler - stolen used a stick to get food and tied two together.

What do intelligent species have a baseline architecture for?

Innovate learning

• Corivd crow, chimp

How does a pigeon differ from a crow in innovative learning ?

Pigeon can show behaviour, but no ‘insight’

• has to learn first

What is the cost to learning?

The more you learn, the quicker you die/

Learning comes with a fitness cost, doesn’t pay to be a generalised good learner.

Is nutcracker really good at learning?

No, learning is context specific