Learning and evolution of cognition in amphibians

MUZIO, R. N.

Jaén

Congreso; 2nd Joint Meeting SEPC-ISCP. XXIV International Congress of the Spanish Society for Comparative Psychology and XVI Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Comparative Psychology; 2012

Spanish Society for Comparative Psychology (SEPC) and International Society for Comparative Psychology (ISCP)

Since his historical paper "The comparative analysis of learning" (Science, 1975), M. E. Bitterman changed the approach to the study of the patterns and processes in the evolution of learning. In this sense, I began my interest in the learning and evolution of cognition in amphibians from this comparative analysis frame. The brain of phylogenetically ancient vertebrates (such as fish and amphibians) shows no neocortex, having a more simple organization than that observed in mammals. Thus, these unconventional models offer a unique possibility to find basic mechanisms of a wide variety of behaviors without a strong cortical modulation. This talk include three specific procedures in amphibians (runway, spatial learning and aversive conditioning) that we developed in our laboratory to study different aspects of learning, both appetitive as aversive, and their neural basis. Overall, the study of amphibian model is starting to give clues about the basic mechanisms of these learned behaviors, which are characters often highly conserved along evolution.