Recollection in an episodic-like memory task in the rat

Eacott, Madeline J.; Easton, Alexander; Zinkivskay, Ann

doi:10.1101/lm.92505

Cited by 136 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Critically, an animal that uses judgments of relative familiarity need not retrieve an episodic memory of the earlier event (see details that follow). Other approaches have sought to document that animals can discriminate: combinations of item-place-context (Eacott & Norman, 2004;Kart-Teke, De Souza Silva, Huston, & Dere, 2006), the sequential order in which events (e.g., odors, objects) are presented (Dere, Huston, & De Souza Silva, 2005a, 2005bEacott, Easton, & Zinkivskay, 2005;Ergorul & Eichenbaum, 2004;Fortin, Wright, & Eichenbaum, 2004;Hunsaker, Lee, & Kesner, 2008;Kart-Teke et al, 2006;Kesner & Hunsaker, 2010;Kesner, Hunsaker, & Warthen, 2008), trial-by-trial records of information (Devkar & Wright, 2016;Kheifets, Freestone, & Gallistel, 2017;Wright, 2007), and the elements of configural learning (Iordanova, Burnett, Aggleton, Good, & Honey, 2009;Iordanova, Burnett, Good, & Honey, 2011;Iordanova, Good, & Honey, 2008). For related reviews, see Dere, Dere, De Souza Silva, Huston, and Zlomuzica (2017) and Eacott and Easton (2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal models of episodic memory

Crystal¹

2018

CCBR

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People retrieve episodic memories about specific earlier events that happened to them. Accordingly, researchers have sought to evaluate the hypothesis that nonhumans retrieve episodic memories. The central hypothesis of an animal model of episodic memory is that, at the moment of a memory assessment, the animal retrieves a memory of the specific earlier event. Testing this hypothesis requires the elimination of nonepisodic memory hypotheses. A number of case studies focus on the development of animal models of episodic memory, including what-where-when memory, source memory, item-in-context memory, and unexpected questions. Compelling evidence for episodic memory comes from studies in which judgments of familiarity cannot produce accurate choices in memory assessments. These approaches may be used to explore the evolution of cognition. Keywords: episodic memory, what-where-when memory, source memory, binding, item-in-context memory IntroductionFundamental aspects of human cognition raise a natural question, namely, How widely distributed are elements of cognition among nonhuman animals? Exploring the distribution of cognitive processes in animals may provide insight into the evolution of cognition (Emery & Clayton, 2004;Gallistel, 1990). This review focuses on episodic memory (see Table 1). Students of human memory focus on episodic memory because it stores personal past experiences of an individual. In this respect, episodic memory is self-referencing. By contrast, other memory systems store facts without retaining other features that accompany memory storage. Moreover, students of human memory have been concerned with subjective experiences that are thought to accompany episodic memory retrieval in people (Tulving, 1985(Tulving, , 1987. However, documenting behavioral expression of a putative subjective experience is problematic in animals. This review advocates that it is profitable to focus on the content of episodic memories, rather than the subjective experiences that may accompany episodic memory. The central hypothesis of an animal model of episodic memory is that, at the moment of a memory assessment, the animal remembers back in time and retrieves a memory of the earlier event or episode (Crystal, 2013b(Crystal, , 2016a(Crystal, , 2016b). An important alternative explanation exists whenever the animal can solve the memory test without remembering back to the specific earlier event. In this review, I focus on judgments of familiarity as a primary nonepisodic memory alternative. According to this view, the presentation of a stimulus gives rise to a memory trace that passively decays as a function of time. Because the age of memories can be detected from a comparison of memory trace strengths, an animal may solve a new-old memory test by following a relatively simple rule such as, Choose the item that currently generates the lowest level of familiarity. Critically, an animal that uses judgments of relative familiarity need not retrieve an episodic memory of the earlier event (see details that follow). Oth...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Animal models of episodic memory

Crystal¹

2018

CCBR

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“…Although there is now considerable evidence that a range of animals have episodic-like memory, including rats (Babb & Crystal, 2005), magpies (Zinkivskay et al, 2009), chickadees (Feeney et al, 2009), and meadow voles (Ferkin et al, 2008), issues over designing an appropriate experiment continue to plague this field. The most systematic difficulty concerns the 'when' component, with differing groups defining this in different ways (e.g., including a place in a sequence: Ergorul & Eichenbaum, 2004; a time of day: Zhou & Crystal, 2009; and using "which" instead of "when": Eacott, Easton, Zinkivskay, 2005;Eacott & Norman, 2004). Common to all of these approaches, however, is that the test would allow animals to demonstrate their ability to remember what, where and when in combination.…”

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confidence: 99%

What hummingbirds can tell us about cognition in the wild

Healy¹,

Hurly²

2013

CCBR

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Here we review around 20 years of experimental data that we have collected during tests of cognitive abilities of free-living, wild rufous hummingbirds Selasphorus rufus at their breeding grounds in southwestern Alberta. Because these birds are readily trained to feed from artificial flowers they have proved a useful system for testing cognitive abilities of an animal outside the box wherein animal cognitive abilities are so often tested in the laboratory. And, although these data all come from a single species in a single location, the long-term aim of this work is to make a contribution to our understanding of the evolution of cognitive abilities, by examining the relationship between the ecological demands these birds face and their cognitive abilities. Testing predictions based on our knowledge of their ecology we have found that, while these birds aggressively defend a territory and display to females during the time we train and test them, they can learn and remember the locations of rewarded flowers, what those flowers look like, and when they are likely to contain food. Small-brained though they may be, these 3g hummingbirds appear to have cognitive capabilities that are not only well matched to their ecological demands, they are in at least some instances better (more capacious) than those of animals tested in the laboratory.

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“…In the animal literature, research on memory for past events has shown that information present at the time of encoding can be an effective cue at retrieval (Clayton & Dickinson, 1998;Eacott, Easton, & Zinkivskay, 2005;Martin-Ordas, Berntsen, & Call, 2013;Mendes & Call, 2014). For instance, Eacott et al (2005) showed that rats could use a contextual feature that was present at encoding and retrieval to successfully locate a desired object.…”

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confidence: 99%

Remembering past exchanges: Apes fail to use social cues

Lewis¹,

Bernsten²,

Call³

2018

AB&C

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-Nonhuman primates can remember events from their distant past. Furthermore, they can distinguish between very similar events by the process of binding. So far, research into long-term memory and binding has focused on the binding of contextual information, such as spatial surroundings. As such, we aimed to investigate if apes can bind and retrieve other types of information, specifically, social information. We presented great apes with three different object types; they learnt to exchange (via reinforcement) one of the object types with one experimenter and another type with a second, different, experimenter. The remaining object type was not reinforced by either of the experimenters. After a delay of two or ten weeks, we assessed the apes' memory of which object type was exchanged with which experimenter. Additionally, we introduced a new experimenter to see if the apes could infer by exclusion that the remaining object type should be exchanged with the new experimenter. The apes successfully remembered which object types were exchanged, but failed to distinguish which object type was exchanged with whom. This failure to bind an object type to a specific person may have resulted from the apes learning to use a rule based on recency, as opposed to learning a conditional rule involving social information. However, results from a second experiment suggested they fail to incorporate social information even when no other information could guide successful performance. Our findings are consistent with research showing long-term memory in primates, but suggest that social information may not be bound in memory as readily as spatial or contextual information.

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Recollection in an episodic-like memory task in the rat

Cited by 136 publications

References 25 publications

Animal models of episodic memory

Animal models of episodic memory

What hummingbirds can tell us about cognition in the wild

Remembering past exchanges: Apes fail to use social cues

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