Lecture 2: Finding and Hoarding Food

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts from the lecture on finding and hoarding food.

Foraging

The act of finding food.

Hoarding

The act of saving food.

Feeding

The act of consuming food.

Path integration

A method used by rodents, involving geometric cues and landmarks, to navigate mazes; associated with the hippocampus.

Radial Maze

A type of maze used to study reference and working memory in rodents.

Water Maze

A maze extensively used with rats to study spatial learning and memory; performance is hippocampus-dependent.

Food Caching

Storing food for later consumption, associated with better spatial abilities and larger hippocampal volume in birds.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight (studied through six stages).

Socio-ecology

Discipline that studies the effect of ecological factors on the interactions between individuals and on the social organization of groups, also known as social structure.

Inhibitory Control

The ability to suppress a response/behavior. Studied in primates using tasks such as A-not-B, Middle cup, Reaching, Swing Door, and Delay of Gratification.

Circadian rhythms

Endogenous timing mechanisms that predict changes in the environment and synchronise the physiology and behaviour accordingly with appropriate times of day or year

Episodic-like memory

Encoding and retrieving information about ‘what’ occurred during an event, ‘where’ it took place, and ‘when’ it happened in time.

Interval timing

The ability to perform an action for a specific duration, anticipate an event once a particular interval has elapsed, judge which one of two intervals was shorter or determine which cue signals the shortest delay to reward over short arbitrary durations (seconds to minutes)

Time Matching

Visiting food resources at or close to the moment of its replenishment