Comments on the presentation ofFelicity Huntingford & Victoria Braithwaite

Fish expert meeting 29th-30rd November 2010

Dr. Ruud van den Bos

Behavioural NeuroscienceDepartment of Animals in Science and Society

Faculty of Veterinary ScienceUtrecht University

Opening remarks

Understanding emotion/cognition-brain-environment relationships in fish species: a challenge! Ruud van den Bos, Biotechniek 49(2): 63-65 (2010)

Key-elements: emotion/cognition (behavioural responses); brain structures (homology) – variation (within species, between species)

A case of convergent evolution or…

Great minds think alike or…to be more precise a great (Felicity-Victoria) and small mind (Me) think alike…

whatever it is…. minds stimulate one another: comments on: level of knowledge, emotions, dorsal pallium, behavioural expressions, variation.

What do we know?

Nieuwenhuys (2009); Northcutt (2008)

Ray-finned fish

(n=1)

(n=2)

(n=6)

(n=0)

(n=0)

Forebrain organisation

Disclaimer about definitions

• To address public concern, we must consider not just the functional responses fish make to challenge but also what they feel

• Ultimately it is impossible to know what a fish (or any non-human animal) feels and the best we can do it to draw deductions from as many sources of indirect evidence as possible

Some reflections on emotions

• Difference between ‘how it feels’ and ‘the fact that you feel, regardless of how it feels’ (van den Bos, 2000);

• … ‘how’ is impossible to study (as yet), ‘that’ may be subject of study (for now);

• … under the condition: we are able to define a role for emotions in the organisation/programming of behaviour (life-history, behavioural domain);

• … in other words: what is the difference between ‘having emotions’ and ‘not having emotions’;

• … ‘how’ may be dependent on specific sensory information, ‘that’ may be dependent on the presence of neuronal networks per se;

Goal-directed behaviour using conditioned taste-aversion (devaluation procedure; Tony Dickinson, Bernard Balleine…)

Animals are trained to reach a certain level of performance

lever

Sugar pellet

…….experimental animals receive an injection of LiCl after consuming sugar pellets in their

home-cage; control animals receive an injection of saline;

LiCl makes rats ill…

Saline/LiCl

……rats are allowed to consume sugar pellets a couple of days later…..

Do not consume pellets

LiCl rats:

Consume pellets

saline rats:

…then they are returned to the box again in an extinction task…

lever

…...alternativesL

ever

pre

sses

Saline rats

LiCl ratsGoal-directed behaviour

trials

Lev

er p

ress

es

trials

Saline rats

LiCl ratsHabit behaviour

Act on basis of: if I press then I receive X which is nice/bad

Expect sugar pellets = Yuk……

Expect sugar pellets = Nice…

Do not act

act

Pitfalls….

Schwabe & Wolf (2009)

Pitfalls….

Dias-Ferreira et al. (2009)

Paralleled by changes in medial prefrontal cortex and striatal areas

stress promotes habit-like behaviour….

• In humans in a spatial task (Schwabe et al., 2007)• In mice in a spatial task (see Schwabe et al., 2010)

Some reflections on emotions

• Devaluation paradigm suggests: crucial role of emotions: being able to adapt behaviour to the changing value of stimuli;

• Data by Damasio in decision-making paradigms suggest a similar role;

• Testing difference between ‘having emotion’ and ‘not having emotion’: goal-directed versus habits (akin to trace- and delay-conditioning);

• But: acute/chronic stress may interfere with this paradigm by shifting activity in the brain towards habit learning……

• Species, life-history, behavioural domain, all or some?

Behavioural expressions

Behavioural expressions

Dorsal pallium

Nieuwenhuys (2009)

Dorsal pallium

Broglio et al. (2010)

Vargas et al. (2009)

Research scheme

• What is the role of emotional/cognitive capacity in the organisation/programming of behaviour (species-environment interaction; including when will they start to play a role (life-history), in which behavioural domain and do species/individual differences exist)?

• Which experiments reveal the difference between ‘having’ and ‘not having’ this emotional/cognitive capacity (including the relation with the underlying neuro-anatomy)?