Lateralization and unilateral transfer of spatial memory in marsh tits

Clayton, Nicola S.

doi:10.1007/bf00213076

Cited by 67 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In the case of food-storing birds, the facts turn out to be more complex if other studies using monocular occlusion are considered. When tested after retention intervals of 24 h or longer, the food-storing marsh tit (Parus palustris) demonstrated superiority of the right eye (Clayton 1993). This finding was corroborated in a study with monocular acquisition and binocular retrieval after retention intervals of 3, 7, and 24 h (Clayton and Krebs 1994b).…”

Section: Prior and Gü Ntü Rkü Nmentioning

confidence: 63%

Parallel Working Memory for Spatial Location and Food-Related Object Cues in Foraging Pigeons: Binocular and Lateralized Monocular Performance

Prior¹,

Güntürkün²

2001

Learn. Mem.

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During foraging, animals can increase their success by both remembering feeding sites and remembering food-related object cues. Because earlier studies have tested either the site or object memory in isolation, the aim of the present study was to evaluate how efficiently birds can utilize both memories simultaneously. Furthermore, the idea was tested that lateralization might be the principle of brain organization that allows for efficient parallel processing. Pigeons learned to search for food in a complex maze with 16 baited sites. To obtain the maximum reward they had to perform two tasks in parallel, a spatial working memory task and an object-specific working memory task. Birds performed well on this dual task but, compared with spatial working memory alone, they were impaired during the first choices of a trial (Experiment 1). When the left and the right brain hemispheres were tested separately by means of monocular occlusion (Experiment 2), object discrimination was better when birds used their right eye/left hemisphere. This was most pronounced during the first choices of a trial. On the spatial component of the task, performance on binocular trials was better than on monocular trials, but monocularly both hemispheres performed at the same level. Results show that on this dual task, discrimination of food-related object cues predominantly involved the left brain hemisphere whereas both hemispheres contributed equally to spatial performance.Animals searching for food can improve their foraging success considerably by learning (e.g., Pulliam 1981;Lewis 1986;Garber 1989; Benhamou 1994;Sherry 1998). This advantage results in several costs. Aside from the investment into the development and maintenance of the neural structures carrying out the learning and memory processes, there are also cognitive costs caused by the fact that certain operations can have an impairing effect on other operations (Dukas 1998). For example, when blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) learned to respond to pictures of moths that were difficult to see against the background, they performed at a much higher level during sessions with only one moth species than during sessions with two moth species presented alternately (Pietrewicz and Kamil 1979). Sticklebacks (Spinachia spinachia) more efficiently learned to attack and handle prey if they fed on one rather than on two types of prey (Croy and Hughes 1991). In addition to demonstrating the importance of cognitive costs, these studies suggest that an adaptive behavioral strategy to circumvent decrements in performance might be to temporarily focus on only one of several types of food available. This was also shown in wood pigeons (Columba palumbus), which feed on a diet similar to that of the species tested in this studythe pigeon, Columba livia. When wood pigeons were experimentally presented with different combinations of seeds, foraging success (as indicated by crop content) was highest in those individuals that had selected a single type of seed (Murton 1971). This suggests that selecti...

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Section: Prior and Gü Ntü Rkü Nmentioning

confidence: 63%

Parallel Working Memory for Spatial Location and Food-Related Object Cues in Foraging Pigeons: Binocular and Lateralized Monocular Performance

Prior¹,

Güntürkün²

2001

Learn. Mem.

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“…It is, however, conceivable that the right hemisphere could in principle learn the task but had problems to remember the spatial contingencies over lengthy periods of time. Although avian right hemispheric mechanisms seem to be specialized to extract relational spatial coding properties [27], at least in some bird species memory for space seems to be distributed within 24 h to the leftbrain side for long-term storage and subsequently 'forgotten' in the right-brain [2,3]. If this were also true for pigeons, their right hemisphere would have suffered from a continuous loss of knowledge about the spatial domain of the task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In birds, the optic nerves cross virtually completely [31], enabling unihemispheric visual stimulation by means of eye caps which are fixed to one eye during testing. With this procedure a left hemispheric superiority in learning and discrimination of visual features and a right hemispheric dominance in relational spatial orientation could be revealed in chicks [21,25,27,29], pigeons [20], marsh tits [2], and zebra finches [1]. The common aspect of all of these studies is that lateralized performance levels are observed while the animals discriminate the relevant stimuli for minutes or hours with the left or the right eye only.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Unihemispheric memory in pigeons-knowledge, the left hemisphere is reluctant to share

Nottelmann

Wohlschläger

Güntürkün

2002

Behavioural Brain Research

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In the present study, pigeons were trained under binocular conditions in a conditional visual discrimination in which they were faced with two identical patterns arranged one above the other. In half of these stimulus pairs the animals had to peck the upper pattern, in the other half the lower one. Although only six pairs of stimuli were used, only four out of eight birds reached learning criterion. These animals needed up to 6 months of training with 3050 to 6650 trails. Then, the experiment proceeded under identical conditions using eye caps restricting vision alternatively to the left or the right eye. These monocular tests revealed that three out of four birds virtually had no knowledge of the task contingencies using their left eye (right hemisphere). Again, several thousand trials were needed to train the birds to criterion with their left eye, while they were simultaneously discriminating at a very high level with their right. These results show that memories on task contingencies are stored unihemispherically in the visually dominant left side despite extensive training with both eyes open. Additionally, it can be concluded that the subsequent read-out by the 'naive' hemisphere can be largely restricted, resulting in a 'natural split-brain' like situation in birds. It is speculated that the absence of a corpus callosum in birds restricts interhemispheric transfer of information. #

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“…where n ϭ total number of looks in Phase 2, and x ϭ number of visits to unseeded sites in Phase 1 (Clayton, 1992a). This expected value was used to compute the observed-expected proportion of looks to each category of site, which is taken as a corrected value.…”

Section: Discrimination Between Seeded Unseeded and Not-visited Sitmentioning

confidence: 99%

One-trial associative memory: comparison of food-storing and nonstoring species of birds

Clayton

Krebs

1994

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Lateralization and unilateral transfer of spatial memory in marsh tits

Cited by 67 publications

References 35 publications

Parallel Working Memory for Spatial Location and Food-Related Object Cues in Foraging Pigeons: Binocular and Lateralized Monocular Performance

Parallel Working Memory for Spatial Location and Food-Related Object Cues in Foraging Pigeons: Binocular and Lateralized Monocular Performance

Unihemispheric memory in pigeons-knowledge, the left hemisphere is reluctant to share

One-trial associative memory: comparison of food-storing and nonstoring species of birds

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