Beyond the mark: Signatures of self-recognition in fish.

A new study with cleaner fish demonstrates the need to expand cognitive testing of animals beyond success testing (a simple pass or fail criteria), and instead investigate the signatures of how animals solve tasks. By tailoring traditional cognitive tests to the focal species' natural behaviour, researchers can provide animals with a better chance for demonstrating their cognitive abilities, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the evolution of cognition.

The effect of progressive image scrambling on neuronal responses at three stations of the pigeon tectofugal pathway.

The progressive image scrambling procedure is an effective way of determining sensitivity to image features at different stages of the visual system, but it hasn't yet been used to evaluate neuronal responses in birds. We determined the effect of progressively scrambling images of objects on the population responses of anterior entopallium (ENTO), mesopallium ventrolaterale (MVL), and posterior nidopallium intermediate pars lateralis (NIL) in pigeons. We found that MVL responses were more sensitive to both the intact objects and the highly scrambled images, whereas ENTO showed no clear preference for the different stimuli.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees, and the Ground Below My Beak: Global and Local Processing in the Pigeon's Visual System.

Non-human animals tend to solve behavioral tasks using local information. Pigeons are particularly biased toward using the local features of stimuli to guide behavior in small-scale environments. When behavioral tasks are performed in large-scale environments, pigeons are much better global processors of information.

Neurons in the pigeon visual network discriminate between faces, scrambled faces, and sine grating images.

Discriminating between object categories (e.g., conspecifics, food, potential predators) is a critical function of the primate and bird visual systems.

The effects of hippocampal and area parahippocampalis lesions on the processing and retention of serial-order behavior, autoshaping, and spatial behavior in pigeons.

We examined the role of the avian hippocampus and area parahippocampalis in serial-order behavior and a variety of other tasks known to be sensitive to hippocampal damage in mammals. Damage to the hippocampus and area parahippocampalis caused impairments in autoshaping and performance on an analogue of a radial-arm maze task, but had no effect on acquisition of 2-item, 3-item, and 4-item serial-order lists. Additionally, the lesions had no effect on the retention of 3-items lists, or on the ability to perform novel derived lists composed of elements from lists they had previously learned.

Pigeon nidopallium caudolaterale, entopallium, and mesopallium ventrolaterale neural responses during categorisation of Monet and Picasso paintings.

Pigeons can successfully discriminate between sets of Picasso and Monet paintings. We recorded from three pallial brain areas: the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), an analogue of mammalian prefrontal cortex; the entopallium (ENTO), an intermediary visual area similar to primate extrastriate cortex; and the mesopallium ventrolaterale (MVL), a higher-order visual area similar to primate higher-order extrastriate cortex, while pigeons performed an S+/S- Picasso versus Monet discrimination task. In NCL, we found that activity reflected reward-driven categorisation, with a strong left-hemisphere dominance.

Are There Differences in "Intelligence" Between Nonhuman Species? The Role of Contextual Variables.

We review evidence for Macphail's (1982, 1985, 1987) , that nonhumans animals do not differ either qualitatively or quantitatively in their cognitive capacities. Our review supports the in so much as there are no qualitative differences among nonhuman vertebrate animals, and any observed differences along the qualitative dimension can be attributed to failures to account for contextual variables. We argue species do differ quantitatively, however, and that the main difference in "intelligence" among animals lies in the degree to which one must account for contextual variables.

Delay activity in the Wulst of pigeons (Columba livia) represents correlates of both sample and reward information.

The avian Wulst is the pallial (analogous to mammalian cortex) termination point of the thalamofugal pathway, one of two main visual pathways in birds, and is considered to be equivalent to primate striate cortex. We recorded neuronal activity from the Wulst in pigeons during two versions of a delayed matching-to-sample procedure. Two birds were trained on a common outcomes (CO) procedure, in which correct responses following both the skateboarder and the flower stimuli were associated with reward.

The functional architecture, receptive field characteristics, and representation of objects in the visual network of the pigeon brain.

We provide an extensive review of the pigeon visual system, focussing on the known cell types, receptive field characteristics, mechanisms of perception/visual attention, and projection profiles of neurons in the thalamofugal and tectofugal pathways. The similarities and differences with the primate visual system at each stage of the visual hierarchy are highlighted. We conclude with a discussion of object and face processing in birds, as well as the current state of knowledge in the search for face-selective neurons in the avian visual system.

Columban Simulation Project 2.0: Numerical Competence and Orthographic Processing in Pigeons and Primates.

Thirty years ago Burrhus Frederic Skinner and Robert Epstein began what is known as the Columban Simulation Project. With pigeons as their subjects, they simulated a series of studies that purportedly demonstrated insight, self-recognition, and symbolic communication in chimpanzees. In each case, with the appropriate training, they demonstrated that pigeons performed in a comparable manner to chimpanzees.

Neurons in the pigeon nidopallium caudolaterale, but not the corticoidea dorsolateralis, display value and effort discounting activity.

We recorded from single neurons in two areas of the pigeon brain while birds were required to peck a stimulus indicating either a high effort task or a low effort task would follow. Upon completion of the task the birds received the same reward. We found that activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale, an area equivalent to the mammalian prefrontal cortex, was modulated by the value of the reward that would be received based on how much effort was required to obtain it.

Nidopallium caudolaterale neuronal responses during serial-order behaviour in pigeons.

Serial-order behaviour is the ability to complete a sequence of responses in order to obtain a reward. Serial-order tasks can be thought of as either externally-ordered (EO) such that the order of responses is predetermined, or internally-ordered (IO) such that the subject determines the order of responses from trial to trial. Ordinal knowledge (representation of first, second, or third etc.

Delay activity in pigeon nidopallium caudolaterale during a variable-delay memory task.

Neurons in the pigeon nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL) are important for the maintenance of information across delays as long as 3 s. In the current study, we recorded neural activity from the avian NCL of 3 birds trained on a working memory task with three different delay lengths intermixed within a session. We found that when the birds are unable to predict the upcoming delay length there is no evidence that NCL cells engage in temporal coding.

Avian Brains: Primate-like Functions of Neurons in the Crow Brain.

Despite the negative connotations of the term 'birdbrain', birds possess cognitive abilities on par with primates. A new study finds that neurons in the crow's brain display characteristics similar to those displayed by neurons in the primate's brain.

Aniracetam does not improve working memory in neurologically healthy pigeons.

Understanding the effects of cognitive enhancing drugs is an important area of research. Much of the research, however, has focused on restoring memory following some sort of disruption to the brain, such as damage or injections of scopolamine. Aniracetam is a positive AMPA-receptor modulator that has shown promise for improving memory under conditions when the brain has been damaged, but its effectiveness in improving memory in neurologically healthy subjects is unclear.

Searching for Face-Category Representation in the Avian Visual Forebrain.

Visual information is processed hierarchically along a ventral ('what') pathway that terminates with categorical representation of biologically relevant visual percepts (such as faces) in the mammalian extrastriate visual cortex. How birds solve face and object representation without a neocortex is a long-standing problem in evolutionary neuroscience, though multiple lines of evidence suggest that these abilities arise from circuitry fundamentally similar to the extrastriate visual cortex. The aim of the present experiment was to determine whether birds also exhibit a categorical representation of the avian face-region in four visual forebrain structures of the tectofugal visual pathway: entopallium (ENTO), mesopallium ventrolaterale (MVL), nidopallium frontolaterale (NFL), and area temporo-parieto-occipitalis (TPO).

Pigeons (Columba livia) learn a four-item list by trial and error.

The aim of the current study was to assess whether pigeons could acquire a four-item list by trial and error. Pigeons received either extensive list training prior to being tested on a novel four-item list (i.e.

Effects of nidopallium caudolaterale inactivation on serial-order behavior in pigeons ( Columba livia).

Serial-order behavior is the ability to complete a sequence of responses in a predetermined order to achieve a reward. In birds, serial-order behavior is thought to be impaired by damage to the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL). In the current study, we examined the role of the NCL in serial-order behavior by training pigeons on a 4-item serial-order task and a go/no-go discrimination task.

Neurons in the Pigeon Nidopallium Caudolaterale Display Value-Related Activity.

We recorded from neurons in the nidopallium caudolaterale, the avian equivalent of the mammalian prefrontal cortex, in four birds. The birds were required to peck a stimulus that indicated the amount of reward they would receive (small or large) after a certain delay (short or long). We found that the activity of neurons in the nidopallium caudolaterale was modulated by the value of the reward that would be received based on the reward amount and the delay to reward.

Do 'literate' pigeons (Columba livia) show mirror-word generalization?

Many children pass through a mirror stage in reading, where they write individual letters or digits in mirror and find it difficult to correctly utilize letters that are mirror images of one another (e.g., b and d).

Pigeon NCL and NFL neuronal activity represents neural correlates of the sample.

Four birds were trained on a delayed matching-to-sample task with common outcomes where correct responses during both red and green trials yielded reward. We recorded neuronal activity from the avian nidopallium caudolaterale, the avian equivalent of the mammalian prefrontal cortex, and the avian nidopallium frontolaterale, a higher-order visual processing region. In both regions we found sustained activity during the delay period of both red and green trials.

Neural correlates of sample-coding and reward-coding in the delay activity of neurons in the entopallium and nidopallium caudolaterale of pigeons (Columba livia).

We recorded neuronal activity from the nidopallium caudolaterale, the avian equivalent of mammalian prefrontal cortex, and the entopallium, the avian equivalent of the mammalian visual cortex, in four birds trained on a differential outcomes delayed matching-to-sample procedure in which one sample stimulus was followed by reward and the other was not. Despite similar incidence of reward-specific and reward-unspecific delay cell types across the two areas, overall entopallium delay activity occurred following both rewarded and non-rewarded stimuli, whereas nidopallium caudolaterale delay activity tended to occur following the rewarded stimulus but not the non-rewarded stimulus. These findings are consistent with the view that delay activity in entopallium represents a code of the sample stimulus whereas delay activity in nidopallium caudolaterale represents a code of the possibility of an upcoming reward.

Orthographic processing in pigeons (Columba livia).

Learning to read involves the acquisition of letter-sound relationships (i.e., decoding skills) and the ability to visually recognize words (i.

The Differential Outcomes Effect in Pigeons (Columba livia): Is It Truly Anticipatory?

We used delay-interval interference to investigate the nature of the differential outcomes effect (DOE) in pigeons. Birds were trained on a delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) task under either common outcome or differential outcome conditions, and then presented with visual interference during the delay period. Consistent with previous literature, the common outcomes birds were slower to learn the DMS task than the differential outcomes birds.