IBYME   02675
INSTITUTO DE BIOLOGIA Y MEDICINA EXPERIMENTAL
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Learning and evolution of cognition in amphibians
Autor/es:
MUZIO, R. N.
Lugar:
Jaén
Reunión:
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
Institución organizadora:
Spanish Society for Comparative Psychology (SEPC) and International Society for Comparative Psychology (ISCP)
Resumen:
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.