PUBLICATION

The geometry as an eyed fish feels it in spontaneous and rewarded spatial reorientation tasks

Authors
Sovrano, V.A., Baratti, G., Potrich, D., Bertolucci, C.
ID
ZDB-PUB-200518-7
Date
2020
Source
Scientific Reports   10: 8020 (Journal)
Registered Authors
Bertolucci, Cristiano
Keywords
none
MeSH Terms
  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal*
  • Fishes/physiology*
  • Learning*
  • Memory
  • Orientation*
  • Pattern Recognition, Visual
  • Reward
  • Space Perception*
PubMed
32415246 Full text @ Sci. Rep.
Abstract
Disoriented human beings and animals, the latter both sighted and blind, are able to use spatial geometric information (metric and sense properties) to guide their reorientation behaviour in a rectangular environment. Here we aimed to investigate reorientation spatial skills in three fish species (Danio rerio, Xenotoca eiseni, Carassius auratus) in an attempt to discover the possible involvement of extra-visual senses during geometric navigation. We observed the fish's behaviour under different experimental procedures (spontaneous social cued task and rewarded exit task), providing them different temporal opportunities to experience the environmental shape (no experience, short and prolonged experience). Results showed that by using spontaneous social cued memory tasks, fishes were not able to take advantage of extra-visual senses to encode the spatial geometry, neither allowing them short time-periods of environmental exploration. Contrariwise, by using a reference memory procedure, during the rewarded exit tasks, thus providing a prolonged extra-visual experience, fishes solved the geometric task, showing also differences in terms of learning times among species.
Genes / Markers
Figures
Expression
Phenotype
Mutations / Transgenics
Human Disease / Model
Sequence Targeting Reagents
Fish
Antibodies
Orthology
Engineered Foreign Genes
Mapping