THE LEARNING PLANET

SG Friedman, Ph.Dwww.behaviorworks.org

www.facebook.com/behaviorworks

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–Susan M Schneider

“Nature and nurture always work together, and scientists have demonstrated that learning from c o n s e qu e n c e s p r e d i c t a b ly activates genes and restructures the brain.”

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–Susan M. Schneider

“The pursuit of happiness means the pursuit of consequences.”

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•Consequences are why we behave, they are the outcomes we behavior to achieve.

•Consequences provide the motivation that “sends butterflies to flowers and people to the moon.”

• Ironic that the science of consequences is so often overlooked: cultural fog.

• The variety of consequences is infinite, far beyond biological drives like food, water, shelter, especially considering conditioned reinforcers.

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•Eubacteria Kingdom —The first life forms on the planet, 400 billion years old.

•Jennings (1906). The behavior of lower organisms:

“The movements of the bacteria are not unordered, but are of such a character as to bring about certain general results, some of which at least are conducive to the welfare of the organism…

Consequences Likely Had A Simple Start8

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“If a bacterium swimming in a certain direction comes against a solid object, it does not remain obstinately pressing its anterior end against the object, but moves in some other direction.

They often collect about bubbles of air, and about masses of decaying animal or plant material.”

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The most primitive biological group to have “higher” neural features (500 million yrs.)

Modern flatworms learned to intercept an electric eye to turn off a bright light, and discriminate when and when not to do so.

Planaria10

The more complex the invertebrate, the more sophisticated learning and the greater variety of reinforcers.

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–Susan M. Schneider

“Boredom indicates a lack of reinforcers , not a lack of stimulation.”

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•All creatures have sensory systems of some sort, which bring lots of reinforcing possibilities.

•Complexity, variability, unpredictability, novelty are all potentially reinforcing conditions.

•Alexandra Kurland is often asked, “Are horses bored in the arena?”

•How would we test that?

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–Susan M. Schneider

“The simple reinforcing value of a change in stimulation can be greatly enhanced by having control.”

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•A study of British government officials found a strong correlation between job control and health (Marmot, et al., 1978, 1991).

•A study of pacing bears found an unpredictable food dispenser did not reduce the stereotypy, but hidden food did (Carlstead, et al., 1996).

•Bears can decide when and how to find food.

•Control is a generalized reinforcer.

•Control is a primary reinforcer.

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–Susan M. Schneider

“Instincts, consequences and learning coexist along a spectrum of relationships.”

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•Instincts are not as fixed as once thought and require environmental input.

• Mallard duckling embryos who didn’t hear any of the pre-hatching cheeps in the egg, failed to have the normal preference for the mother’s imprinting call after hatching (Gottlieb, 1997).

• Mallard ducklings that listened to hours of the chicken imprinting call, before and after hatching, preferred it over their own species’ call, even though they heard their own pre-hatch cheeping.

•The system of genes and environmental input that normally produce the imprinting call was flexible, given this amount of unusual stimulation.

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•What evolution and learning have in common is selectionism, which is a consequence issue.

•Success is selected, failure is not.

• First comes variation, second selection, and third is the effect on the gene pool.

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Before they have even hatched, cuttlefish embryos can peer out of their eggs and spot potential prey. Embryos exposed to crabs preferred them as prey later in life (Dickel, 2008).

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–Susan M. Schneider

“A critical step presumably occurred when consequences became effective for behavior other than those that normally produced them.”

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Food Procurement Behavior25

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tier-dressur.de

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Fishing 28

–Susan M. Schneider

“Once the ability to learn from consequences had evolved, it became an important driver of evolution.”

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•Darwin’s Galapagos finches are an example of sympatric speciation, i.e., species separation without geographic isolation.

• Foraging on big seeds created selection pressure for thick, husk-cracking beaks because birds with bigger beaks had the advantage in survival and reproduction.

• For finches that pursued insects, thinner probing beaks were selected instead.

• Variability in behavior, selection, genetic change.

Selectionism is the “cause that works backwards.”30

First — behavioral variation Second — selection by consequences Third — effect on gene pool

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Pacific Northwest Orcas: Behavior paving the way for genetic change.

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–Susan M. Schneider

“Some species go one step further. They don't just choose a niche because of the consequences found there, they construct the niche.”

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Fossil Evidence: “Tongue” predates flowering plants. Development of the proboscis may have adapted for be an sucking free liquids for maintaining the insect’s water balance under arid conditions (van Eldijk, 2018).

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“Learning from consequences developed because it proved to help fit creatures for the everyday struggle of life.”

–Susan M. Schneider

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–Biologist Lord Robert May, quoted by Susan M. Schneider

“We share half our genes with the banana.”

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• Humans have fewer genes (around 30,000) than some salamanders, grasshoppers, and single-celled amoebas.

• Ninety-six percent of all genes found in human chromosomes are found in the exact same relative order in mouse chromosomes.

• Less than 2% of our human DNA actually codes for proteins. Another small portion is regulatory.

• Turns out, what matters is what’s done with the basic materials, not the number of genes.

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“It’s a matter of tinkering.”

–Susan M. Schneider

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The Pax-6/eyeless genes determine where eyes are placed in vertebrates, fruit flies, flatworms, humans.

The distal-less gene helps control the formation of appendages — the hundreds of “feet” in sea urchins, human legs, butterfly wings, and fish fins.

The proteins used in body construction, like most proteins, are used for other functions too.

The proteins coded by the genes affecting memory in Drosophila, turned out to be well known for their role in metabolism.

This means the genes coding for those proteins were regulated in different ways, in different locations, depending on different uses.

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Nature conserves.

Are these genes homologous (i.e., were they passed down from the common ancestor of all these different organisms) or analogous (i.e., did they all evolve independently through convergent evolution)? !

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•With the help of vitamin K, the liver produces proteins important in blood clotting. If the liver didn’t function to produce this outcome, how long would it be before selection kicks in?

•Changes occur over time as a function of consequences!

“It’s All Operant”

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78% of the tobacco hookworms learned to avoid the scent of ethyl acetate paired with shock.

77% of adult moths also avoided the scent.

In the pupa soup, some elements of caterpillar’s nervous system remains intact.

Learning has to occur in the last possible stage before they pupate (necessary brain structures developed).

Moths remember what they learn as caterpillars.

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Vinauger, et al (2018), put mosquitoes and different odors into a vortex with vibrations similar to a hand swatting and missing. In 15 minutes, they learned odors predict vibrations, choosing to approach a new odor instead. They retained this memory for 24 hours.

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“Consequences affect our genes only through activating or deactivating them — and that’s a great deal of power.”

–Susan M. Schneider

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•Exercise, which we do for consequences, changes gene expression in the affected muscles, regulating their metabolism.

•Stress can shut down genetic activity in your immune system, resulting in susceptibility to colds, etc.

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“One thing we know is the whole system is churning: genes, cellular processes, hormones and n e u r o t r a n s m i t t e r s , environmental factors of all sorts, the whole shebang.”

–Susan M. Schneider

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“… enrichment later in life may be another way to compensate for the disadvantages of early stress.… what matters, ultimately, is flexibility…It’s a system made of many systems.”

–Susan M. Schneider

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•The “spontaneous hypertensive” strain of rats produce rats that exhibit characteristics of human hypertension, i.e., high blood pressure …

• … but only if raised by mothers of the same strain.

• If raised by normal mothers they don't exhibit ht.

• If normal rats are raised by spontaneously hypertensive mothers, those young don’t exhibit ht.

•Both genes and the environment are essential.

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“… [it] is a two-way street. Stimulating environments full of learning can actually expand the brain, growing more neurons and synapses — thereby supporting more and faster learning.”

–Susan M. Schneider

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•Enriched environments can even correct for some of the effects of brain damage, early deprivation, and lead exposure. Including…

• …new and faster neural connections, increases in brain volume and weight, and enhancements of the supporting players of the nervous system (e.g., nerve insulating support cells involved in conduction-boosting fatty myelination).

•A whole slew of electrical and chemical activities, and brain-cell changes orchestrate our highest functions and enrichment and learning appear to influence most of them.

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Past Hx: “A total mess.”

Present: A transformation…

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–Kelly and Berridge, quoted by Susan M. Schneider

“ R ewa r d - r e l at e d b e h av i o r emerges from the dynamic activity of entire neural networks rather than from any single brain structure.”

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Hey! I’m strengthening

my neural networks!

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Your boss tells you some news that disturbs you, but a phone call from your spouse distracts you. After you get off the phone, you have a lingering feeling that something is not quite right, but you cannot pinpoint what it is. It is likely you are reacting to the continued effect of

A. serotonin B. neurotransmitters C. action potentials D. hormones

Behavioral neuroscience exam question:

E. YOUR BOSS TELLS YOU SOME NEWS THAT DISTURBS YOU!!

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Interacting Systems

• Nature and nurture are always working together, interacting across all levels, and consequences are always there, from the nucleotide bases of our DNA to our rich, stimulating environments.

• Molecular biology — consequences routinely activate and deactivate genes.

• Neuroscience — learning from consequences expands and rewires the brain.

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Pavlov’s Plants Plants? Plants!

•Light was the US and air flow as the CS. Air flow from fan predicted the location and time of light.

• After repeated pairings of fan then light, garden peas grew towards the source of the air flow even when the light was not present. Not so for control group. (Gagliano, et al. , 2016).

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Plants respond defensively to the sound of caterpillars eating their leaves by producing more of an unappealing chemical when exposed to the vibrations caused by caterpillars chewing. (Appel et al., 2014).

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Plananimals

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Deprived of oxygen, naked mole-rats can survive by metabolizing fructose just as plants do.  https://phys.org/news/2017-04-naked-mole-rats-oxygen.html#jCp

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–Susan M. Schneider

“Once living things could learn from consequences, life was never the same.”

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Yeah, it’s blue but much more impressive is that it’s the Learning Planet.

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