Neural basis of instrumental learning in amphibians.

MUZIO, R. N.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; XIVth Biannual Meeting of the International Society for Comparative Psychology (Chair).; 2008

International Society for Comparative Psychology (ISCP, USA)

The brain of phylogenetically older groups (such as fish and amphibians) does not present neocortex, taking a simpler organization than that observed in mammals. Thus, these animal models offer the opportunity to find basic mechanisms of a wide variety of behaviors without a strong cortical modulation. This presentation will include three procedures that we have been developing in our laboratory with amphibians to study various aspects of learning instrumental, both appetitive as aversive, and their neural basis. First, learning in a runway situation, in which the medial pallium (homologous of the mammalian hippocampus) is involved in the extinction of the response. Second, cardiac conditioning in an avoidance situation. Finally, spatial learning, in which the medial pallium also play an essential role. As a whole, the study of the amphibian model is beginning to give keys on the basic mechanisms of these learned behaviors. Also, these data show that these processes are very general among different groups of vertebrates, suggesting that these characters are highly conserved through evolution.