Navigation Flashcards
SPATIAL NAVIGATION: FOCUS
- much evidence that spatial location = highly salient for many species
- important in early ideas development about animal cognition (Tolman’s “cognitive map”)
- many recent investigations
MEMORY: FOCUS
- recent exceptional ability evidence in spatial memory
- intriguing neuropsychological data
TERMINOLOGY
DISTAL VS PROXIMAL CUES
- long range VS short range
EGOCENTRIC VS ALLOCENTRIC FRAMES OF REFERENCE
- relative to individual VS to environment
BEACONS VS LANDMARKS
- Pavlovian approach VS used as a reference
SPATIAL LEARNING: RATS
- rats will try solving learning tasks as spatial problems aka. position effects
SMALL (1990) - can learn complex mazes (ie. Hampton Court replica)
TOLMAN ET AL (1946) - sunburst maze showed rats have directional sense; can take shortcuts BUT only w/beacon
TOLMAN ET AL (1946)
- trained rats to run single path maze; gave them sunburst (many path) maze once they were running first quickly
- same start/goal BUT blocked off og path
- statsig choice of correct path to goal
- did they know goal location? NO; may have been following light next to goal
HIPPOCAMPUS = COGNITIVE MAP
- good evidence suggesting spatial learning involvement
- implication = higher spatial relations = bigger hippocampus
O’KEEFE & NADEL - single cell recording in hippocampus shows “place cells” which fire when rat in particular maze area
- hippocampal lesions disrupt performance in Morris water maze
THE MORRIS WATER MAZE: APPARATUS
- raised off floor
- open so animal can see around room
- A-D = landmarks (ie. potted plants/beach balls)
- water in centre; “milky” made using synthetic additive to stop rat seeing platform just below surface
THE MORRIS WATER MAZE: PROCEDURE
- rat put in poor at random location along side (S); typically midway between 2 landmarks
- swims to platform (roundabout at first; directly later)
- rats w/hippocampal lesions = impaired here; take longer to find platform; don’t exhibit ability to swim straight as controls can
NAVIGATION: REQUIREMENTS
MAP
- to specify spatial relations of objects
- Tolman (1948); cognitive map to explain rats learning mazes
COMPASS
- to specify directions/orient map
- Kramer (1953); bird navigation
LOCATOR
- to tell you where you are
REDUNDANT SYSTEMS
- navigation still possible w/o one of above
MAGNETIC NAVIGATION
- green sea turtles
- migrate 2000km from feeding groups on Brazilian coast -> Ascension island nest sites
- thought to use orientation/earth’s magnetic field intensity (aka. bearing map)
- unclear instinct/individual learning contributions
MULTIPLE SYSTEMS
- homing pigeons; all must be learned:
1. sun compass = requires daytime knowledge
2. magnetic compass
3. infrasound & other beacons
4. olfaction (ie. Guildford et al. (1998))
5. route marks ie. motorways (Lipp et al. (2004))
5. proximal landmarks at flight start/end (ie. Biro et al. (2003))
ADAPTIVE INFLUENCES ON SPATIAL LEARNING
- scatter-hoarders aka. squirrels/marsh tits
- make several k food catches; recover all months later
- oft environment = dif at cache/recovery (ie. snow)
- catches can’t be marked (ie. by scent); would be pilfered so amazing spatial memory is needed
SCATTER HOARDERS: MACDONALD (1997)
- trained grey squirrels to find nuts it’d buried at random 2m place
- visual signal when nuts = present
- could still recover nuts accurately 2m later
- decoy nuts buried at dif distances from targets; decoy >2cm away -> always chose target
SCATTER-HOARDERS: KREBS ET AL. (1990
- compared storing parids w/non-storing species on spatial memory tasks
- scatter hoarders perform better
SCATTER-HOARDERS: KAMIL ET AL. (2000)
- Clark’s nutcrackers; investigated what cues they use to find caches
- birds use both absolute/relative cues & both distance/direction from landmarks BUT direction = ^ salient
