Comments on the presentation ofFelicity Huntingford & Victoria Braithwaite
Fish expert meeting 29th-30rd November 2010
Dr. Ruud van den Bos
Behavioural NeuroscienceDepartment of Animals in Science and Society
Faculty of Veterinary ScienceUtrecht University
Opening remarks
Understanding emotion/cognition-brain-environment relationships in fish species: a challenge! Ruud van den Bos, Biotechniek 49(2): 63-65 (2010)
Key-elements: emotion/cognition (behavioural responses); brain structures (homology) – variation (within species, between species)
A case of convergent evolution or…
Great minds think alike or…to be more precise a great (Felicity-Victoria) and small mind (Me) think alike…
whatever it is…. minds stimulate one another: comments on: level of knowledge, emotions, dorsal pallium, behavioural expressions, variation.
What do we know?
Nieuwenhuys (2009); Northcutt (2008)
Ray-finned fish
(n=1)
(n=2)
(n=6)
(n=0)
(n=0)
Forebrain organisation
Disclaimer about definitions
• To address public concern, we must consider not just the functional responses fish make to challenge but also what they feel
• Ultimately it is impossible to know what a fish (or any non-human animal) feels and the best we can do it to draw deductions from as many sources of indirect evidence as possible
Some reflections on emotions
• Difference between ‘how it feels’ and ‘the fact that you feel, regardless of how it feels’ (van den Bos, 2000);
• … ‘how’ is impossible to study (as yet), ‘that’ may be subject of study (for now);
• … under the condition: we are able to define a role for emotions in the organisation/programming of behaviour (life-history, behavioural domain);
• … in other words: what is the difference between ‘having emotions’ and ‘not having emotions’;
• … ‘how’ may be dependent on specific sensory information, ‘that’ may be dependent on the presence of neuronal networks per se;
Goal-directed behaviour using conditioned taste-aversion (devaluation procedure; Tony Dickinson, Bernard Balleine…)
Animals are trained to reach a certain level of performance
lever
Sugar pellet
…….experimental animals receive an injection of LiCl after consuming sugar pellets in their
home-cage; control animals receive an injection of saline;
LiCl makes rats ill…
Saline/LiCl
……rats are allowed to consume sugar pellets a couple of days later…..
Do not consume pellets
LiCl rats:
Consume pellets
saline rats:
…then they are returned to the box again in an extinction task…
lever
…...alternativesL
ever
pre
sses
Saline rats
LiCl ratsGoal-directed behaviour
trials
Lev
er p
ress
es
trials
Saline rats
LiCl ratsHabit behaviour
Act on basis of: if I press then I receive X which is nice/bad
Expect sugar pellets = Yuk……
Expect sugar pellets = Nice…
Do not act
act
Pitfalls….
Schwabe & Wolf (2009)
Pitfalls….
Dias-Ferreira et al. (2009)
Paralleled by changes in medial prefrontal cortex and striatal areas
stress promotes habit-like behaviour….
• In humans in a spatial task (Schwabe et al., 2007)• In mice in a spatial task (see Schwabe et al., 2010)
Some reflections on emotions
• Devaluation paradigm suggests: crucial role of emotions: being able to adapt behaviour to the changing value of stimuli;
• Data by Damasio in decision-making paradigms suggest a similar role;
• Testing difference between ‘having emotion’ and ‘not having emotion’: goal-directed versus habits (akin to trace- and delay-conditioning);
• But: acute/chronic stress may interfere with this paradigm by shifting activity in the brain towards habit learning……
• Species, life-history, behavioural domain, all or some?
Behavioural expressions
Behavioural expressions
Dorsal pallium
Nieuwenhuys (2009)
Dorsal pallium
Broglio et al. (2010)
Vargas et al. (2009)
Research scheme
• What is the role of emotional/cognitive capacity in the organisation/programming of behaviour (species-environment interaction; including when will they start to play a role (life-history), in which behavioural domain and do species/individual differences exist)?
• Which experiments reveal the difference between ‘having’ and ‘not having’ this emotional/cognitive capacity (including the relation with the underlying neuro-anatomy)?