Intro lecture

Neuroethology

A biological approach to the study of natural animal behavior and its neural basis, elucidate structure and function of the black box

Behavioral psychology

Treats animals as black box, aims to study relationship between stimuli and animal behavior

Ethology

Aims to study relationship between stimuli and animal behavior under natural conditions

Neurobiologists

Work in lab, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel

Ethologists

Work out in the field, study animal behavior in natural environment, Jane Goodall

Behaviorists

behavioral psychologists study animal behavior in lab and believe all behaviors are shaped by stimuli in the environment (no genetic influence), think pavlov

pavlovian conditioning

classical conditioning, a form of associative learning where an animal learns to associate the occurrence of a neutral stimulus with the occurrence of another stimulus

instrumental conditioning

thorndike puzzle boxes, a form of associate learning where an animal learns to associate a response (a motor act) with a meaningful stimulus (food)

law effect

any behavior followed by a pleasant consequence will be repeated, and if unpleasant will be stopped

skinner box

positive reinforcement vs punishment, tested law effect, kinda j built off of thorndike

niko tinbergen

four principle questions when studying animal behavior


1. function-what is it for?
2. development-how did it develop within an individuals lifetime?
3. evolution-how did it evolve over the history of the species?
4. nervous system control-how does it work?

fixed action patterns

innate behaviors that once its started, motion is still followed through (stereotyped behavior)

behavior is triggered/released by a stimulus called a sign stimulus/releaser

innate releasing mechanism!!

goose egg rolling behavior

male fiddler crab claw wave

quantification of male fiddler crab wave behavior

take notice of similarities and differences in same individual, within the same species, and between different species

innate releasing mechanism

specific sensory “filter“ mechanism which selects biologically relevant sign stimuli in the environment and ignores others and triggers the fixed action pattern

sign stimulus → innate releasing mechanism → fixed action pattern

releasing value

ability of a stimulus to elicit a species specific behavior, how frequently did an animal do the behavior

think about the different size, shape, and color experiment done on the goose eggs

supernormal stimuli

stimulus that has higher releasing value than natural stimulus

think of pecking response in baby herring gull (supernormal stimuli was the red pen)

ethology contribution to neuroethology

natural behavior in natural environment

fixed action patterns

sign stimuli

sensory processing

why should we study other species

kroghs principle: for every problem in biology there is an organism best suited for its study

all vertebrate brains share the same basic structures

all nervous systems evolved to produce behavior

relative size of a brain region is related to importance of function of that region

bats that use hearing to prey have large inferior colliculus and bats that use vision have large superior colliculus

correlation between repertoire size and HVC size in male warblers

hippocampal size related to spatial memory, seen with food storing birds

vibrissae is larger in visual cortex of rats (use whiskers to navigate dark enviro) compared to squirrels (use vision, not nocturnal)

sensitization

strong stimulus results in exaggerated response to all subsequent stimuli