1. Learning behaviour 2
What do animals learn?

2. Learning about the location of home (or the birth place)
Atlantic salmon return
to their native river (they
memorise olfactory cues
of the stream in which they
were born)

3. Learning about the path to the food source
“Progress has been made by Chittka & Geiger, who in heroic experiments, erected 3.46m high artificial landmarks...“
Collett & Zeil 1998, In: Spatial representation in animals. (Healy S, ed)

4. Counting bees

5. Counting bees

6. The hippocampus as a model for processing of spatial memory information

7. Location of the hippocampus in humans

8. Why is the hippocampus called hippocampus?
“The flight of fancy which led Arantius, in 1587, to introduce the term 'hippocampus‘ is recorded in what is perhaps the worst anatomical description extant. It has left its readers in doubt whether the elevations of cerebral substance were being compared with fish or beast, and no one could be sure which end was the head."
Lewis FT 1923 The significance of the term hippocampus. J Comp Neurol 35: 213

9. The hippocampus as a neural substrate for the cognitive map?

10. Hippocampal place cells

11. Types of neurons found in hippocampus and adjacent brain areas:
place cells
head direction cells in the subiculum
The hippocampus receives input from “intention cells” in prefrontal cortex

12. Hippocampus and ecology in birds – what food storing birds can do:
hide seeds a day, so may have several 1000 caches
dig these up after weeks or months
remember sequence of hiding (so they unearth the ones hidden earlier)
remember the quality of seeds so that they preferentially dig up the better ones

13. Hippocampus in birds

15. Fig. 1.10 Learning about mates
Imagine a female who mates with different males over the course of time. Such a female might learn which male is a good mate by keeping track of the number of eggs she laid when associated with each male.

16. Motor learning

17. Learning about who is part of the family
e.g. in Java monkeys
also some species
of social bees (hive
scent is memorised)

18. Learning and aggression
e.g. Gourami fish males
fight repeated contests with
other males

19. Fig. 4.22 Males that had learned to associate a light with the
presence of another male were more aggressive when the
light cue was present.

20. Fig. 4.23

21. Fig. 1.11

22. B
Fig right
d = deficient; b = balanced;

23. A
(left)
Fig left

24. Fig left

25. Fig. 1.14

26. Summary
know about the kinds of behavioural/ecological contexts where learning is relevant