Social context shapes cognitive abilities: associative memories are modulated by fight outcome and social isolation in the crab Neohelice granulata.

SANTOS MARIA JIMENA; MERLO SANTIAGO; KACZER LAURA; PEDREIRA MARÍA EUGENIA

ANIMAL COGNITION

SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

Lugar: HEIDELBERG; Año: 2021

1435-9448

Cognitive abilities of an animal can be influenced by distinct social experiences.However, the extent of this modulation has not been addressed in different learningscenarios: are all tasks similarly affected by social experiences? In the present study weanalyzed the effect of social dominance in aversive and appetitive memory processes inthe crab Neohelice granulata. In addition, we studied the influence of social isolation onmemory ability. Social dominance experiments consisted of an agonistic phaseimmediately followed by a memory phase. During the agonistic phase, matched pairs ofmale crabs were staged in 10-min encounters and the dominant or subordinate conditionof each member of the dyad was determined. During the memory phase, crabs weretrained to acquire aversive or appetitive memory and tested 24 h later. Results showedthat the agonistic encounter can modulate long-term memory according to thedominance condition; in such a way that memory retention of subordinates resultshigher than their respective dominant. Remarkably, this result was found for bothaversive and appetitive memory tasks. In addition, we found that isolated animalsshowed no memory retention when compared with animals that remained grouped.Altogether this work emphasizes the importance of social context as a modulator ofcognitive abilities.