Week 1: Intro and Fundamentals Flashcards
– Describe Tinbergen’s 4 questions. – Apply them to an instance of animal behaviour. – Understand whether different explanations of a behaviour are actually mutually exclusive. (21 cards)
What are Darwin’s two main impacts on the study of behaviour
1)Ethology: Scientific study of behaviour -behaviour evolved and we need to quantify it as we do for body parts to look for patterns across species + differences can show which are innate/learned.
2) Neuroscience: Humans can’t be different. To understand humans we can study animals.
Why is behaviour harder to study evolutionarily
It doesn’t fossilise like bones and body physical structures do.
Who are the two pioneers of ethology
Tinbergen and Lorenz through bird spotting
Define ethogram
Record kept of all observed behaviour in every species - can then identify patterns of consistent/different behaviour across same or other species + spot evolutionary trends.
e.g. courtship behaviours have to be the same in all species otherwise they would not know how to mate.
Describe fixed action patterns and give examples.
A recognisable unit of behaviour that is
characteristic of a particular species - e.g. egg rolling in nesting birds (when displaced out the nest, they bring it back), smiling/laughing in infants when being tickled (deaf/blind child has not observed this behaviour in others) and orangutans.
Define releasers relating to behaviour
Much of behaviour is elicited by rather simple
external stimuli called ‘releasing stimuli’
e.g. red spots release begging in gull chicks. A red stick produced the most begging behaviour = red is a releasing stimulus.
or
Male sticklebacks respond to simplistic models of red bellied ‘males’ and swollen bellied ‘females’ (eggs ready for fertalisation) and ignore other realistic normal looking fishes.
Describe Thordike’s puzzle box
A tight box where animals would eventually realise that by pressing a lever and doing other actions in a specific sequence they could escape and eat the food- trial and error learning. The more they were put in a box the quicker they were at escaping and very rarely there were animals who showed spontaneous problem solving where they did it first try.
In Thorndike’s puzzle boxes all animals seemed to learn the same way. So perhaps there are universal mechanisms for learning.
What did behaviourism believe in
Nobody has innate behaviours preprogrammed in their head - you learn through associations and conditioning based on the consequences of those behaviours. Animals learn the behaviours specific to their species. Common in all animals.
Describe the Skinner box experiment and other lesser known experiments
Rat in a box presses lever and receives food reward or avoids getting electric shock.
He tried this with his children for better behaviour but it didn’t work.
He did condition pigeons to peck a screen therefore releasing missiles for warcraft towards ships.
What are Tinbergen’s 4 questions to study animal behaviour
1)Evolution - what happened across time which allowed this species to do this.
2)Function - why are they producing that behaviour, what is the benefit. Fitness? passing down genes?
3)Mechanism - how is it possible for an animal to produce that behaviour. Physiology/neural underpinning.
4)Development - what is it about the individual’s lifetime that lets them produce this behaviour. i.e. how did they learn to do it?
What’s something all Tinbergen’s questions have in common
- The answers to Tinbergen’s questions are
complementary, not mutually exclusive (i.e. there isn’t just one answer for each of the questions). - We can answer each of Tinbergen’s questions in parallel and at multiple levels.
How would social grooming be analysed through Tinbergen’s 4 questions
1) Mechanism - sensorimotor skills
2) Development - social learning
3) Evolution - evolution of complex social groups.
4) Function - Hygiene and health
Because they’re not mutually exclusive and we can have multiple levels of explanation, hygiene could relate to bonding or maintaining a social hierarchy.
Define a model system
A specialist organism that we can study and create analogs from them of areas we’re interested in.
How many neurons do nematode worms have compared to fruit flies, humans and rats
worm: 302
fruit fly: 135,000
rat: 71000000 (71M)
Human: 85000000000 (85B)
How do we relate neuroscience to behaviour
Linking brain activity and neuroanatomy
Define single cell electrophysiology
You can find individual cells that correlate with precise spatial information and threatening stimuli and escape responses.
Electrodes can be attached to an animal’s brain. Cells will fire to specific stimuli. Each cell has a specific spatial firing.
e.g. Place and grid cells in mammals ( e.g. hippocampus structure seen in all mammals, all mammals share similar circuits.) and collision detection in locust.
Better for smaller brains not big complex brains like humans’
It’s expensive.
Describe fMRIs and fluoresecent calcium imaging
fMRI:
Bold signal where the magnetic field is associated with blood oxygen.
Very expensive - detect tiny differences by the magnetic field at the microscopic level.
High resolution.
Nosy and claustrophic -can’t have limb movements so VR can help with that.
FCI:
Can do huge areas of brain at the same time, for a small animal can do the whole brain.
Genetically modified animal to have fluorescent protein when there is brain activity in the area so very invasive.
What are some examples of neuroanatomy and functions we have learned from damage in the brain
1) Paul Broca discovered area associated with speech production.
2) Phineas gage suffered specific personality changes after an industrial accident that damaged his prefrontal lobe.
3) Brodmann areas are used to identify functional areas of the brain.
Define connectomes
The attempt to systematically map brains which started in the 60s with a nematode worm. Need to understand simple organisms first and once understood we can move onto more complex ones.
What have we learned about neuroanatomy through comparing species - give examples
1) Hippocampus size: correlates with spatial behaviour in bird species.
2) Sensory homunculi: allocation of cortical resources reflects behavioural priorities. e.g. star-nosed mole.
3) Brain regions in ants: development differences in genetically similar individuals reflects brain functions. e.g. flight control areas in ants and learning areas.
Can you give the pros and cons of the four different methods of neuroscience?
1) Single cell electrophysiology: precise timing but limited spatial scale.
2) fMRI: Spatial scale but temporal accuracy.
3) Connectomics: Holistic but computationally challenging.
4) Comparative neuroanatomy: Good for evolutionary patterns, highlight key ROIs but lack of functional architecture and correlational.
