PSYC 4100 animal models, cognition, language

Ways to Change the Brain

• cognitive therapy

• psychotherapy

• brain training (lumosity) — brain games, really only makes you better at that specific game though

• cognitive enhancers — nootropics, TDCS

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)

• how it MIGHT work

  • electrotherapy — anode depolarizes neurons; increasing firing, Cathode hyperpolarizes the neuron and inhibits firings

Methylphendiate (MPH) aka Ritalin

• originally developed to treat ADHD

• psychostimulant related to amphetamine and cocaine

• lower doses improve cognitive performance and reduce locomotor activity, even in healthy individuals

• reduced flexibility, increased confidence

Modafinil

• originally developed to treat sleep disorders

• psychostimulant related to amphetamine and cocaine

• alters many neurotransmitters

• results in extreme alertness/focus

• used by

  • surgeons

  • military/NASA

  • wallstreet

• chronic use seems safe

Beta Blockers

• used to treat heart conditions

• wide usage by athletes, musicians, actors,

  • considered performance enhancing drug by international olympics committee

• tamps down the adrenergic system

• not a true cognitive enhancer but can improve performance in high stress situations

• but also not as selective as other cognitive enhances so there are side effects: reduced emotional memory

Caffeine

• hard to study due to lack of naive control subjects, withdrawal effects

• improves incidental, but NOT intentional learning

• slight improvement to working memory

Ethology

• study of animal behavior

• the evolutionary adaptiveness of animal behaviors is a big aspect of their focus

Ethology

• often, but not always, relate non-human behavior to human behavior

• usually to better understand our own evolutionary history, looking at shared traits

• human ethology is a subfield in ethology

Charles Darwin

• fundamental figure in field of ethology

• his work laid the foundations for the field, particularly the expressions of the emotions in man and animals

Darwins Contributions of Ethology

• Darwins biggest contribution to the field of science was his theory of evolution by natural selection

• basically, traits that increase the likelihood that an individual will survive to reproduce and will be represented in the next generation — so on and so on

Major Players in Ethology

• Konrad Lorenz

  • is famous for his work in imprinting (and infamous for other reasons)

• Niko Tinbergen

  • came up with 4 primary questions that ethologists should fcous on when studying animal behavior

• Karl von Frisch

  • discovered that bees were communicated about food resources via a, “waggle dance”

• Jane Goodall

  • revolutionary in moving our understanding of animal intelligence forward via work on tool use, social behavior, etc.

Tinbergens 4 Questions

• The behaviors functionality for the individual organism

• The behaviors phylogenetic or evolutionary history

• The behaviors proximate or mechanistic explanation

• The behaviors developmental (ontogeny) trajectory

Jane Goodall’s work with primates

• her work with primates revolutionized our understanding non-human primate intelligence

  • tool use

  • ant fishing

  • social learning

  • complex emotions

  • even sign language (maybe)

Animal Behavior

• animals can do… a lot, probably a lot more than most people give them credit for

• depending on the species, it’s almost always a matter of degree to how successful they are at performing human-like behavior ideas

Clever Hans effect

• we must be VERY clear and VERY careful in the way we can characterize animal behaviors, and any phenomenon

• people will always want to believe extraordinary things; careful, deliberate science protects us from this

Innate behaviors

• require no learning, are triggered at the presentation of a specific stimulus from birth (reflexes)

Fixed Action patterns

series of actions that run to completion once it has been triggered

Fixed Action Patterns

• stereotyped

• complex

• species-characteristic

• released

• triggered

• independent of experience

Innate Behaviors

• these behaviors are genetically built into members of this species

  • in fixed action patterns, there is an innate association with the specific releaser and the behavior

• requires ZERO LEARNING or previous experience with trigger stimulus

  • how do we know?

    • expose a naive member of that species (ex no chance to learnt hat behavior) to that particular stimulus, and then behavior is elicited

Learned Behaviors

• imprinting happens when goslings develop and attachment to their parent, soon after birth, during a critical period

  • precocial species can walk early in life, advantageous for them to stay near mother while still young

Learned behaviors

• why is imprinting not innate?

• essentially any large stimulus will trigger imprinting, not just a parent (requires an an association, there is no innate connection to the mother)

Behaviors are on a continuum

• innate behaviors and instincts are those behaviors that you have at birth

• learned behaviors have some component of an association after birth, but can have a number of innate components

• we’ll continue through this continuum of how species have learned to successfully interact with their environment

What specific behaviors did we see there?

• two major types of learning in young

  • play

  • exploration

The Importance of Play Across Species

• what are costs of play

  • young are relatively vulnerable

  • risk of injury

  • takes lots of energy

Karl Groos (1898)

• play is a practice of species-typical skills

  • what way does wrestling play build species-typical skills?

Groos Theory

• young animals play more than adults

• those animals that have the most to learn, play the most

• play is centered around the most valuable skills

  • mating competition

  • hunting behaviors

• play involves repetition

• play is challenging

  • ex: stronger animal will “pin” itself and then fight to get out

Exploration: How Animals learn what and where

• two types of learning

  • learning to do (skills) — play

  • learning about (information learning) — exploration

Exploration is informational learning

• food

• shelter

• water

• mates

Latent Learning

• innate preference for novelty

• Latent learning is knowledge acquired without immediate reinforcement or intention, which remains hidden until a specific reward or need arises. Common examples include knowing the route to work only after being a passenger daily

Food Aversion

• biological prepared to learn about nutrition

  • prepared behavior

• eat what your elders eat

• remember what new foods taste like

• why are children picky eaters?

• kids have more tastebuds/regenerate faster than us, that’s why kids are prone to being pickier

Patient SM

• 45 year old female

• Urbach-Wiethe disease resulting in early loss of both amygdalae

• profound impairments in fear process

Mirror Neurons

• these neurons become active both while viewing another perform some task and while performing the task itself

• allows for strengthening of neural connections while viewing other

Humans are an extremely cultral species

• culture is essentially the passage of tradiitons from gen to gen

• learned through observations of elders

• may be present in chimps

Phonemes

• smallest unit of language, any of the perceptually distinct unit of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another

Speech is made up of..

4 sounds

• s

• pah

• e

• ch

Morphemes

combination of phonemes, smallest unit of language that carry meaning, words or parts of words

Grammar

• how morphemes are combined to produce meaningful speech

• different across languages

• 40 phonemes — over 100,000 morphemes — 616,500 + words in the Oxford dictionary

• then arranged into an infinite number of ways

Syntax

• general set of rules used by a language when forming sentences

• semantics refers to the actual meanings of the words, phrases, and statements in a language