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Results for “Animal Behavior and Cognition”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Pointing Errors in Non-Metric Virtual Environments

There have been suggestions that human navigation may depend on representations that have no metric, Euclidean interpretation but that hypothesis remains contentious. An alternative is that observers build a consistent 3D representation of space. Using immersive virtual reality, we measured the ability of observers to point to targets in mazes that had zero, one or three wormholes - regions where the maze changed in configuration (invisibly). In one model, we allowed the configuration of the maze to vary to best explain the pointing data; in a second model we also allowed the local reference frame to be rotated through 90, 180 or 270 degrees. The latter model outperformed the former in the wormhole conditions, inconsistent with a Euclidean cognitive map.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

A decisional space account of saccadic reaction times towards personally familiar faces

Manual and saccadic reaction times (SRTs) have been used to determine the minimum time required for different types of visual categorizations. Such studies have demonstrated that faces can be detected within natural scenes within as little as 100ms (Crouzet, Kirchner & Thorpe, 2010), while increasingly complex decisions require longer processing times (Besson, Barragan-Jason, Thorpe, Fabre-Thorpe, Puma et al., 2017). Following the notion that facial representations stored in memory facilitate perceptual processing (Ramon & Gobbini, 2018), a recent study reported 180ms as the fastest speed at which \"familiar face detection\" based on expressed choice saccades (Visconti di Ollegio Castello & Gobbini, 2015). At first glance, these findings seem incompatible with the earliest neural markers of familiarity reported in electrophysiological studies (Barragan-Jason, Cauchoix & Barbeau, 2015; Caharel, Ramon & Rossion, 2014; Huang, Wu, Hu, Wang, Ding & Qu et al., 2017), which should temporally precede any overtly observed behavioral (oculomotor or manual) categorization. Here, we reason that this apparent discrepancy could be accounted for in terms of decisional space constraints, which modulate both manual RTs observed for different levels of visual processing (Besson et al., 2017), as well as saccadic RTs (SRTs) in both healthy observers and neurological patients (Ramon, in press; Ramon, Sokhn, Lao & Caldara, in press). In the present study, over 70 observers completed three different SRT experiments in which decisional space was manipulated through task demands and stimulus probability. Subjects performed a gender categorization task, or one of two familiar face \"recognition\" tasks, which differed with respect to the number of personally familiar identities presented (3 vs. 7). We observe an inverse relationship between visual categorization proficiency and decisional space. Observers were most accurate for categorization of gender, which could be achieved in as little as 140ms. Categorization of highly predictable targets was more error-prone and required an additional ~100ms processing time. Our findings add to increasing evidence that pre-activation of identity-information can modulate early visual processing in a top-down manner. They also emphasize the importance of considering procedural aspects as well as terminology when aiming to characterize cognitive processes.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2016

Human infants’ understanding of social imitation: Inferences of affiliation from third party observations

Imitation is ubiquitous in positive social interactions. For adult and child observers, it also supports inferences about the participants in such interactions and their social relationships, but the origins of these inferences are obscure. Do infants attach social significance to this form of interaction? Here we test 4- to 5.5-month-old infants interpretation of imitation, asking if the imitative interactions they observe support inferences of social affiliation across 10 experimental conditions that varied the modality of the imitation (movement vs. sound), the roles of specific characters (imitators vs. targets), the number of characters in the displays (3 vs. 5), and the number of parties initiating affiliative test events (1 vs. 2). These experiments, together with one experiment conducted with 12-month-old infants, yielded three main findings. First, infants expect that characters who engaged in imitation will approach and affiliate with the characters whom they imitated. Second, infants show no evidence of expecting that characters who were targets of imitation will approach and affiliate with their imitators. Third, analyzing imitative interactions is difficult for young infants, whose expectations vary in strength depending on the number of characters to be tracked and the number of affiliative actors to be compared. These findings have implications for our understanding of social imitation, and they provide methods for advancing understanding of other aspects of early social cognitive development.

Animal Behavior and Cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Revisiting the social brain hypothesis: contest duration depends on loser’s brain size

BackgroundBrain size is expected to evolve by a balance between cognitive benefits and energetic costs. Several influential hypotheses have suggested that large brains may be especially beneficial in social contexts. Group living and competition may pose unique cognitive challenges to individuals and favor the evolution of increased cognitive ability. Evidence comes from comparative studies on the link between social complexity and brain morphology, but the strength of empirical support has recently been challenged. In addition, the behavioral mechanisms that would link cognitive ability to sociality are rarely studied. Here we take an alternative approach and investigate experimentally how brain size can relate to the social competence of individuals within species, a problem that so far has remained unresolved. We use the unique guppy brain size selection line model system to evaluate whether large brains are advantageous by allowing individuals to better assess their performance in a social contest situation. Based on theoretical literature, we predict that contest duration should depend on the brain size of the loser, as it is the capitulation of the losing individual that ends the fight.\n\nResultsFirst, we show that studying the movement of competitors during contests allows for precise estimation of the dominance timeline in guppies, even when overt aggression is typically one-sided and delayed. Second, we staged contests between pairs of male that had been artificially selected for large and small relative brain size, with demonstrated differences in cognitive ability. We show that dominance was established much earlier in contests with large-brained losers, whereas the brain size of the winner had no effect. Following our prediction, large-brained individuals gave up more quickly when they were going to lose.\n\nConclusionsThese results suggest that large-brained individuals assess their performance in contests better and that social competence indeed can depend on brain size. Conflict resolution may therefore be an important behavioral mechanism behind macro-evolutionary patterns between sociality and brain size. Since conflict is ubiquitous among group-living animals, the possible effects of the social environment on the evolution of cognition may be more broadly applicable than previously thought.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Negative memory engrams in the hippocampus enhance the susceptibility to chronic social defeat stress

The hippocampus has been highly implicated in depression symptoms. Recent findings suggest that the expression and susceptibility of depression symptoms are related to the enhanced functioning of the hippocampus. We reasoned that hippocampal engrams, which represent ensembles of neurons with increased activity after memory formation, could underlie some contributions of the hippocampus to depression symptoms. Using the chronic social defeat stress (CSDS) model, we examined social defeat-related hippocampal engrams in mice that are either susceptible or resilient to the stressor. TetTag mice were used to label social defeat-related hippocampal ensembles by LacZ. Engram cells correspond to ensembles that were reactivated by the same stressor.\n\nCompared to resilient and non-stressed control mice, we found that in both the dorsal and ventral hippocampal CA1 regions, susceptible mice exhibited a higher reactivation of social defeat-related LacZ-labeled cells (i.e. engram cells). The density of CA1 engram cells correlated with the level of social avoidance. Using DREADD to reactivate social defeat-related but not neutral contextual stimuli-related CA1 engram cells decreased social interaction. Increased engram cells in susceptible mice were region specific and could not be found in the dentate gyrus. Susceptible mice exhibited more negative stimuli-, but not neutral stimuli-, related CA1 engram cells than resilient mice in the dorsal hippocampus. Finally, chronic, but not a short and subthreshold, social defeat protocol was necessary to increase CA1 engram cell density. Together, our findings reveal that the susceptibility to CSDS is regulated by hippocampal CA1 engrams for negative memory. Hippocampal engrams for negative memory may underlie the vulnerability and expression of cognitive symptoms in depression.\n\nSignificance statementWe provided evidence that negative memory hippocampal engrams contribute to the susceptibility to developing depression-related behavior after chronic social defeat stress. The activation of positive memory engrams have been shown to alleviate depression-related behaviors, while our findings reveal the pathological roles of negative memory engrams that could lead to those behaviors. Increased negative memory engrams could be a downstream effect of the reported high hippocampal activity in animal models and patients with depression. Unlike affective symptoms, we know much less about the cellular mechanisms of the cognitive symptoms of depression. Given the crucial roles of hippocampal engrams in memory formation, enhanced reactivation of negative memory engrams could be an important cellular mechanism that underlies the cognitive symptoms of depression.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Estradiol treatment in a nonhuman primate model of menopause preserves affective reactivity

As humans age, their affective lives tend to become more positive and less negative. This phenomenon, known as the positivity effect (or positivity bias), occurs even as aging leads to declines in health and cognitive outcomes. Despite these well documented effects in humans, extent to which affective processes change in nonhuman animals, and in particular nonhuman primates - is unclear. As a first step towards developing a model for human affective aging in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), we tested aged, surgically menopausal aged and middle-aged gonadally intact female rhesus monkeys on a classic index of affective reactivity in monkeys, the Human Intruder task. The Human Intruder task evaluates behavioral responses to varying levels of threat. Aged, surgically menopausal monkeys received hormone replacement therapy consisting of a cyclic estradiol regimen, or vehicle injections as a control. Average responsivity to threat did not vary by condition, but middle aged monkeys and aged monkeys on estradiol were more reactive to the most potent level of threat than to a moderate level of threat, replicating previously published results in other age groups and male monkeys. In contrast, aged monkeys not on estradiol did not show such calibration to threat level. These findings suggest that estrogen may be important for maintaining more youthful affective responding. They also illustrate the utility of behavioral assays of affective reactivity in nonhuman primate models of cognitive and reproductive aging in humans.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2016

Expanding perspectives on cognition in humans, animals, and machines

Over the past decade neuroscience has been attacking the problem of cognition with increasing vigor. Yet, what exactly is cognition, beyond a general signifier of anything seemingly complex the brain does? Here, we briefly review attempts to define, describe, explain, build, enhance and experience cognition. We highlight perspectives including psychology, molecular biology, computation, dynamical systems, machine learning, behavior and phenomenology. This survey of the landscape reveals not a clear target for explanation but a pluralistic and evolving scene with diverse opportunities for grounding future research. We argue that rather than getting to the bottom of it, over the next century, by deconstructing and redefining cognition, neuroscience will and should expand rather than merely reduce our concept of the mind.

Animal Behavior and Cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Emphasizing the ‘positive’ in positive reinforcement: Using non-binary rewarding for training monkeys on cognitive tasks

Non-human primates constitute an indispensable model system for studying higher brain functions at the neurophysiological level. They can be trained on highly demanding cognitive tasks, and studies involving these animals elucidated the neuronal mechanisms of various cognitive and executive functions, such as visual attention, working memory, and decision-making. The training of behavioral tasks used to study these processes builds on reinforcement learning and involves many discrete stages. It may takes several months, but frequently lasts a year or longer. The training is usually based on applying a liquid reward as the reinforcer to strengthen the desired behavior, and absence of the reward if the animals response was wrong. We here propose an alternative, non-binary rewarding scheme that aims to minimize unrewarded behavior. We show the potential of this alternative scheme to significantly speed up the training of an animal at various stages, without trade-off in accessible task difficulty or task performance.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Higher-order discrimination learning by honey bees in a virtual environment

Non-elemental learning constitutes a cognitive challenge because, contrary to elemental learning forms, it does not rely on simple associations, as events to be learned are usually ambiguous in terms of reinforcement outcome. Negative patterning constitutes a paradigmatic case of non-elemental learning, as subjects have to learn that single elements A and B are reinforced while their conjunctive representation AB is not reinforced (A+, B+ vs. AB-). Solving this problem requires treating the compound AB as being different from the linear sum of its components in order to overcome stimulus ambiguity (A+/A- and B+/B-). The honey bee is the only insect capable of mastering negative patterning as shown by numerous studies restricted mainly to the olfactory domain. Here we studied the capacity of bees to solve a negative patterning discrimination in the visual domain and used to this end a virtual reality (VR) environment in which a tethered bee walking stationary on a treadmill faces visual stimuli projected on a semicircular screen. Stimuli are updated by the bees movements, thus creating an immersive environment. Bees were trained to discriminate single-colored gratings rewarded with sucrose solution (blue, green; A+, B+) from a non-rewarded composite grating (blue-green, AB-). Bees learned this discrimination in the VR environment and inhibited to this end linear processing of the composite grating, which otherwise is treated as the sum of its components. Our results show for the first time mastering of a non-linear visual discrimination in a VR environment by honey bees, thus highlighting the value of VR for the study of cognition in insects.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2015

How can we study the evolution of animal minds?

AbstractDuring the last 50 years, comparative cognition and neurosciences have improved our understanding of animal minds while evolutionary ecology has revealed how selection acts on traits through evolutionary time. We describe how this evolutionary approach can be used to understand the evolution of animal cognition. We recount how comparative and fitness methods have been used to understand the evolution of cognition and outline how these methods could be extended to gain new insights into cognitive evolution. The fitness approach, in particular, offers unprecedented opportunities to study the evolutionary mechanisms responsible for variation in cognition within species and could allow us to investigate both proximate (ie: neural and developmental) and ultimate (ie: ecological and evolutionary) underpinnings of animal cognition together. Our goal in this review is to build a bridge between cognitive neuroscientist and evolutionary biologists, illustrate how their research could be complementary, and encourage evolutionary ecologists to include explicit attention to cognitive processes in their studies of behaviour. We believe that in doing so, we can break new ground in our understanding of the evolution of cognition as well as gain a much better understanding of animal behaviour.

Animal Behavior and Cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Remembrance of Inferences Past

Bayesian models of cognition assume that people compute probability distributions over hypotheses. However, the required computations are frequently intractable or prohibitively expensive. Since people often encounter many closely related distributions, selective reuse of computations (amortized inference) is a computationally efficient use of the brains limited resources. We present three experiments that provide evidence for amortization in human probabilistic reasoning. When sequentially answering two related queries about natural scenes, participants responses to the second query systematically depend on the structure of the first query. This influence is sensitive to the content of the queries, only appearing when the queries are related. Using a cognitive load manipulation, we find evidence that people amortize summary statistics of previous inferences, rather than storing the entire distribution. These findings support the view that the brain trades off accuracy and computational cost, to make efficient use of its limited cognitive resources to approximate probabilistic inference.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Cleaner wrasse pass the mark test. What are the implications for consciousness and self-awareness testing in animals?

The ability to perceive and recognise a reflected mirror image as self (mirror self-recognition, MSR) is considered a hallmark of cognition across species. Although MSR has been reported in mammals and birds, it is not known to occur in any other major taxon. A factor potentially limiting the ability to test for MSR is that the established assay for MSR, the mark test, shows an interpretation bias towards animals with the dexterity (or limbs) required to touch a mark. Here, we show that the cleaner wrasse fish, Labroides dimidiatus, passes through all phases of the mark test: (i) social reactions towards the reflection, (ii) repeated idiosyncratic behaviours towards the mirror (contingency testing), and (iii) frequent observation of their reflection. When subsequently provided with a coloured tag, individuals attempt to remove the mark in the presence of a mirror but show no response towards transparent marks, or to coloured marks in the absence of a mirror. This remarkable finding presents a challenge to our interpretation of the mark test - do we accept that these behavioural responses in the mark test, which are taken as evidence of self-recognition in other species, mean that fish are self-aware? Or do we conclude that these behavioural patterns have a basis in a cognitive process other than self-recognition? If the former, what does this mean for our understanding of animal intelligence? If the latter, what does this mean for our application and interpretation of the mark test as a metric for animal cognitive abilities?

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2016

Ecological Representations

Mainstream cognitive science and neuroscience both rely heavily on the notion of representation in order to explain the full range of our behavioral repertoire. The relevant feature of representation is its ability to designate (stand in for) spatially or temporally distant properties, When we organize our behavior with respect to mental or neural representations, we are (in principle) organizing our behavior with respect to the property it designates. While representational theories are a potentially a powerful foundation for a good cognitive theory, problems such as grounding and system-detectable error remain unsolved. For these and other reasons, ecological explanations reject the need for representations and do not treat the nervous system as doing any mediating work. However, this has left us without a straight-forward vocabulary to engage with so-called representation-hungry problems or the role of the nervous system in cognition. In an effort to develop such a vocabulary, here we show that James J Gibsons ecological information functions to designate the ecologically-scaled dynamical world to an organism. We then show that this designation analysis of information leads to an ecological conceptualization of the neural activity caused by information, which in turn we argue can together support intentional behavior with respect to spatially and temporally distal properties. Problems such as grounding and error detection are solved via law-based specification. This analysis extends the ecological framework into the realm of representation-hungry problems, making it as powerful a potential basis for theories of behavior as traditional cognitive approaches. The resulting analysis does, according to some definitions, allow information and the neural activity to be conceptualized as representations; however, the key work is done by information and the analysis remains true to Gibsons ecological ontology.

Animal Behavior and Cognition↗

bioRxiv2018

Boundaries in Spatial Cognition: How They Look is More Important than What They Do

Large walls and other typical boundaries strongly influence neural activity related to navigation and the representations of spatial layouts. They are also major aids to reliable navigation behavior in young children and non-human animals. Is this because they are physical boundaries (barriers to movement), or because they present certain visual features, such as visually extended 3D surfaces? Here, these two factors were dissociated by using immersive virtual reality and real boundaries. Eighty adults recalled target locations in one of four environments: plywood, where a virtual wall coincided with a large piece of real plywood; pass through, where the virtual wall coincided with empty space and participants could pass through it; pass over, where the virtual wall was projected downward to be visible underneath a transparent floor; and cones, where the walls were replaced with traffic cones. One condition had features that were boundaries and looked like boundaries (plywood); two had features that were not boundaries but looked like boundaries (pass over/through); and one had features that were not boundaries and did not look like boundaries (cones). The precision and bias of responses changed only as a function of looking like a boundary. This suggests that variations in spatial coding are more closely linked to the visual properties of environmental layouts than to whether they contain physical boundaries (barriers to movement).

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Complex Dynamics From Simple Cognition: The Primary Ratchet Effect In Animal Culture

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWIt is often observed that human culture, unlike most other animal culture, is cumulative: human technology and behavior is more complex than any individual could invent in their own lifetime. Cumulative culture is often explained by appeal to a combination of high-fidelity social learning and innovation, the \"ratchet effect.\" What is often overlooked is that both human and other animal culture is supported by a more primary ratchet effect that retains and increases the prevalence of adaptive behavior. This primary ratchet can arise without appeal to specialized cognitive adaptations and is plausibly more widespread in animal societies. We use a simple model to highlight how simple forms of contingent social learning can create the primary ratchet effect, dramatically increasing the prevalence of adaptive, hard to invent behavior. We investigate some ways that demography may interact with the primary ratchet to generate patterns of cultural variation. As the primary ratchet may be common to many animal societies, its cognitive components and population dynamics provide a common foundation for the study of animal culture and a necessary foundation for understanding the origins of human cumulative culture.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Inferential Learning of Serial Order of Perceptual Categories by Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Category learning in animals is typically trained explicitly, in most instances by varying the exemplars of a single category in a matching-to-sample task. Here, we show that rhesus macaques can learn categories by a transitive inference paradigm in which novel exemplars of five categories were presented throughout each training session. Instead of requiring decisions about a constant set of repetitively presented stimuli, we studied the macaques ability to determine the relative order of multiple exemplars of particular stimuli that were rarely repeated. Ordinal decisions generalized both to novel stimuli and, as a consequence, to novel pairings. Thus, we showed that rhesus monkeys could learn to categorize on the basis of implied ordinal position, and that they could then make inferences about category order. Our results challenge the plausibility of association models of category learning and broaden the scope of the transitive inference paradigm.\n\nSignificance StatementThe cognitive abilities of non-human animals are of enduring interest to scientists and the general public because they blur the dividing line between human and non-human intelligence. Categorization and sequence learning are highly abstract cognitive abilities each in their own right. This study is the first to provide evidence that visual categories can be ordered serially by macaque monkeys using a behavioral paradigm that provides no explicit feedback about category or serial order. These results strongly challenge accounts of learning based on stimulus-outcome associations.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2016

Transitive inference in humans and rhesus macaques after massed training of the last two list items

Transitive inference (TI) is a classic learning paradigm for which the relative contributions of experienced rewards and representation-driven inference have been vigorously debated, particularly with regard to the notion that animals are capable of logic and reasoning. Rhesus macaque subjects and human participants performed a TI task in which, prior to learning a seven-item list ABCDEFG, a block of trials presented exclusively the pair FG. Contrary to the expectation of associative models, the high prior rate of reward for F did not disrupt learning of the entire list. Monkeys (who each completed many sessions) learned to anticipate that novel stimuli should be preferred over F. We interpret this as evidence of a general task representation of TI that generalizes beyond learning about specific stimuli. Humans (who were task-naive) showed a transitory bias to F when it was paired with novel stimuli, but very rapidly unlearned that bias. Performance with respect to the remaining stimuli was consistent with past reports of TI in both species. These results are difficult to reconcile with any account that seeks to assign the strength of association between individual stimuli and rewards. Instead, they support both sophisticated cognitive processes in both species, albeit with some species differences.

Animal Behavior and Cognition↗

bioRxiv2017

Rhythms of the Body, Rhythms of the Brain: Respiration, Neural Oscillations, and Embodied Cognition

In spite of its importance as a life-defining rhythmic movement and its constant rhythmic contraction and relaxation of the body, respiration has not received attention in Embodied Cognition (EC) literature. Our paper aims to show that (1) respiration exerts significant and unexpected bottom-up influence on cognitive processes, and (2) it does so by modulating neural synchronization that underlies specific cognitive processes. Then, (3) we suggest that the particular example of respiration may function as a model for a general mechanism through which the body influences cognitive functioning. Finally, (4) we work out the implications for embodied cognition, draw a parallel to the role of gesture, and argue that respiration sometimes plays a double, pragmatic and epistemic, role, which reduces the cognitive load. In such cases, consistent with EC, the overall cognitive activity includes a loop-like interaction between neural and non-neural elements. (141 words)

animal behavior and cognition↗