Brain and Behaviour Brain Brian Introduction Behaviour is

Brain and Behaviour Brain, Brian!

Introduction Behaviour is the output of the nervous system, and the brain in particular Evolution acts on the phenotype (behaviour) Behaviour is the output of the Brain Therefore, evolution acts on the brain

Key Terms Neuron Action potential Interneuron Sensory Neuron Motor Neuron Receptor

Examples Yes, you knew it, moths and bats!!!!!!! Its not just me that thinks this is way cool

In a Moth’s Ear…. Moth Ear basically has two neurons A 1 and A 2 They are not frequency sensitive, but do not respond to low frequencies

Those would be some tiny Q tips…. .

Do Moths Have Ear Wax? A 1 is responsive to intensity More firing with closer bat A 2 only fires with very loud sounds A 2 fires, bat must be very close

Moths and Bats, Charts and Graphs A 1 on the left fires, that wing beats faster Moth’s course corrects to 180 degrees from bat So very and totally cool A 2, go crazy 2 neuron ear can encode where a predator in in 3 dimensional space!!!

Feature Detectors Hubel and Wiesel and cats and Swedish Kings n n Cells in cortex that respond to different line orientation Truly cool, maybe they network together to recognize objects?

More Feature Detectors Dave Perrett’s work on face recogntion in monkeys Monkeys have cells in their cortex that respond only to a specific monkey! Sort of like one of those ‘Grandmother’ cells. n n Probably a hierarchical network Hughlings-Jackson Principle

The Hippocampus, Everybody’s Playground Radial Maze (Olton and Samuelson, 1976) Hp Lesions affect working memory Hp Lesions do not affect reference memory Same with the Morris Water Maze

Place cells in Hippocampus O’Keefe and Nadel (1978) ‘The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map Found cells in Hp in the rat that only fired when the animal was in a certain spatial location. While the world probably isn’t quite that simple, it is still pretty neat

Food Storing Birds Yes, I know’’ you know that Parids, Corvids and Sittids store food. Most songbirds leave for the winter, they don’t hang out and store food Food Storers rely on stored food, especially in the winter. Without out, they die There are some interesting cognitive differences, that we will eventually get to n If only to feed my gargantuan ego

Sherry et al, Krebs et al Basically figured out that Hp volume, when corrected for body weight, is larger in Food storers than in non-storers Same stuff in Corvids and Al Kamil’s group

Hampton, Sherry, Shettleworth, Khurgel and Ivy (1995) HP volume correlates with dependence on stored food

Sherry and Vaccarino, 1989 Let birds store Lesioned HP in half of the birds They still searched Didn’t find their cache sites though

Barnea and Nottebohm (1994) Chickadees store in the fall and winter, lessen off in the spring HP seems to shrink and grow!!

Brown Headed Cowbirds Sherry, Jacobs and Gaulin Cowbirds are nest parasites Females have to remember where possible host nests are Males don’t Guess what?

Conclusions Nervous system controls behaviour Evolution acts on behaviour (phenotype) Therefore, evolution acts on the nervous system The food-storing story, especially, is simple and elegant n More on it later