Sensory Ethology

Reductionist approach

The sensory arena

Physical features of the environment: jungle, ocean, desert, air Biologically relevant features: - Identifying the tasty grass from short distance (deer) - Detecting a mouse from a distance (falcon) - Detecting a fish in the water (kingfisher) Tuning the sensory system to the biologically relevant stimuli

The mission -- observe the two Handkerchiefs and try guessing: How many swimmers are in the lake? How many small boats and large ships are there? Where are the boats heading?

Can you guess?

Yes you can this was a description of hearing. Walk in the park outdoors and you will be able to detect the sound and location of birds, people, cars The park is the lake, your external ears are the canals, and your internal ears are the Handkerchiefs

Sensory scene analysis: the world as a cocktail party

Sensory neuroethology
Interpretation of sensory information Visual system: relate the structure and location of eyes to the behavior Auditory system: tuning of hearing to natural stimulus, echolocation. Integration of sensory information: visual and auditory information in the barn owl Pain and pleasure

Sensation Perception and Interpretation

Anything we see, hear, feel, smell, or taste requires billions of nerve cells to flash urgent messages along cross-linked pathways and feedback loops in our brains, performing intricate calculations that we have only begun to explore All those processes differ across species, Hence different animals sense different worlds

Do we sense all we can sense?

After taking a mixture of mind-altering drugs one night, Stephen D ., a 22-year-old medical student, dreamed that he had become a dog and was surrounded by extraordinarily rich, meaningful smells. The dream seemed to continue after he woke uphis world was suddenly filled with pungent odors. Walking into the hospital clinic that morning, "I sniffed like a dog. And in that sniff I recognized, before seeing them, the twenty patients who were there," he later told neurologist Oliver Sacks. "Each had his own smell-face," he said, "far more vivid and evocative than any sight-face." He also recognized local streets and shops by their smell. Some smells gave him pleasure and others disgusted him, but all were so compelling that he could hardly think about anything else. The strange symptoms disappeared after a few weeks

Octopus and giant squids

advanced camera type eye rectangular iris which contracts to a narrow slit It can focus its eye lens for near and far vision a basis of control for all its arms, as well as look for food and watch for predators

Typical spider eyes

Jumping-Spider eyes

Insect vision
Many insects need to see in three dimensions while flying at high speed. up to 300 frames per second for fast-moving flying insects winged insects have better vision than wingless ones Many insects see a wider spectrum of colors than humans do find plants for food and protection, and to identify each other Small eyes constraints: it is very unlikely that insects can see stars in the sky fixed focus eyes, must move in close to get a good view

Bee eyes

Bee eyes
Bees may have 3,000 to 4,000 facets The center facets are larger than peripheral sensors Bee eyes sense polarization of light in the sky and also UV light. They seem to see blue colors best, but they also see ultraviolet colors Yellow flower may have markings that reflect or absorb light in the UV region

Dragonfly vision
large compound complex eyes with very wide-angle vision to allow them to see as they fly forward and backward.

Movable eye socket arrangements for looking around to detect predators and food

Snake eyes

Thermal vision
Some snakes find warm targets to attack without visible light. These targets, invisible to human eyes at night, require vision in the infrared spectral range. Because of their vision in the infrared (IR) spectral region, these snakes have the ability to hunt and attack at any time.

thermal vision in snakes

Pit viper, not only has color vision, it also has extended infra-red (IR) vision well beyond where humans can see sense temperature differences of less than 0.03 degrees centigrade

Bird eye
Birds need more complex vision systems than many land animals. Some birds use the sun and even star patterns to navigate Eagles may see a fish from 3,000 or 4,000 meters height: you cannot even see the bird from that height Birds have the highest density of photoreceptors: the eyes of the hawk have 1 million photoreceptors per square millimeter

Kingfisher vision
They are seeing a reflection of a fish in the water.

Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds can see flowers at a distance and very small parts of a flower at close range. This indicates they have good focusing ability for near and far objects.

Location of the eye

Night vision

Owl eyes do not rotate as much as human eyes do, but an owl's head can turn a considerable angle to accomplish the same purpose. They also have good stereo vision and depth perception because of the owl's eyes being separated by a significant distance.

Why so far?

Tapetum lucidum

Night vision
Like all cats, lions have retro-reflection characteristics that allow the eye to reflect light back to its source. Lions and tigers have large eyes, with long-distance vision, which they need for hunting.

Vision and hearing

Echolocation

Acoustic Startle Response in the Noctuid Moth

Noctuid moths show a stereotyped two-phased behavior in response to the sounds of an echolocating bat: Weak ultrasonic stimulation (indicating a bat at a distance) generates negative phonotaxis Strong stimulation (indicating an approaching bat) produces unpredictable looping

Tympanal organs located bilaterally on the thorax with two receptor cells, A1 and A2 Cell 504 to extract bat distance at close range, since it accurately encodes the high repetition rates used just prior to attack

Hearing

Hearing in animals
Different frequency ranges, different ear structure: praying mantis has a single ear with huge frequency range detection up to 130kHz (up to 20kHz in most people). Bat hear and produce high frequency sounds for echolocation Low frequency sounds large animals but also long travel distance

Audiogram of 5 dogs

Species

Approximate Range (Hz)

human dog cat mouse

64-23,000 67-45,000 45-64,000 1,000-91,000

gerbil
bat beluga whale elephant goldfish tree frog canary chicken

100-60,000
2,000-110,000 1,000-123,000 16-12,000 20-3,000 50-4,000 250-8,000 125-2,000

Class exercise: Audiograms in air and underwater

In air Underwater

Smell

 We have an innate ability to detect bad smells. One-day old babies give facial expressions that indicate rejection when given fish or rotten egg odor. Babies recognize their own mothers' smell Dogs and horses are very sensitive to the smell of fear in humans women can discriminate between armpit swabs taken from people watching "happy" and "sad" films

 Memory is often associated with smell. Smell and memory are intimately linked we can distinguish around 10,000 different smells

Mouse brain

the olfactory epithelium

The area of this olfactory region is 5cm2 in humans and 25cm2 in cat

Odorant binding proteins

facilitate the transfer of lipophilic ligands (odorants) across the mucus layer to the receptors,

Odorant receptors
hundreds of odorant receptors, but only one (or at most a few) expressed in each olfactory receptor neuron
encoded by as many as 1000 different genes (2% of genome)

Odorant receptors
The neurons that sense odor molecules lie deep within the nasal cavity, in a patch of cells called the olfactory epithelium. Each olfactory neuron in the epithelium is topped by at least 10 hair-like cilia that protrude into a thin bath of mucus at the cell surface. receptor proteins that recognize and bind odorant molecules, thereby stimulating the cell to send signals to the brain

Sensation of smell
From the olfactory cells in the nose, the sensation reach the olfactory area of the cortex after only a single relay in the olfactory bulb . The olfactory cortex, in turn, connects directly with the hypothalamus, which controls sexual and maternal behavior

Smell of Money There's money in smell - around $24 billion is spent on scented products per annum in the US alone

The sense of touch

There are at least six types of touch receptors in the skin: for hot, for cold, for pain, for pressure, for touch, and for fine touch.

Sensation of Pain and Pleasure

Function of pain
Negative reinforcement Effects of pain is in many cases debilitating Balance between pleasure and pain most of the time we feel neutral On level of physiology, there are no evidences to support difference in pain threshold across animal species On level of pain tolerance huge variance Horse low tolerance, Cow high tolerance

Sensation of pain
Pain perception is carried by two types of axons: Delta fibers are small myelinated fibers that carry the sensation of sharp pricking pain. The sensors are confined to the skin and mucous membranes. C fibers are small unmyelinated fibers, so they transmit signals more slowly. They come from polymodal nociceptors that respond to mechanical, thermal or chemical stimuli and cause the sensation of long-lasting burning pain

Modulation of pain
In the spinal cord, C fibers release Substance P to transmit the pain signal to axons projecting to the thalamus An enkephalin interneuron acting on the C fiber terminal will inhibit Substance P release, causing analgesia [endorphins, enkephalins] The enkephalin interneuron is itself controlled by serotonergic fibers descending from the medulla of the brain stem

Pleasure-Pain Axis
pain Pleasure

Limbic System
The limbic system includes the thalamus, hypothalamus and other structures. The limbic system is involved with emotions. If a certain stimulus is associated with pleasure, the emotional content of the experience is stored in this system and may become a stimulus for repeating this experience. The feelings of anger, joy, and remorse are also thought to occur here

The mesolimbic dopamine system

An animal with an electrode permanently implanted in its septal area will work hard (lever press at high rates > 6,000 times per hour) to obtain brief stimulation pulses to the septal area the reward of being allowed to stimulate its own brain with an electric shock. Observing the animal suggests that the stimulus is producing sexual pleasure.

Brain activity during ejaculation

An animal with an electrode in its central gray midbrain area behaves very differently. In some locations, the artificial stimulus produces rage and fear. In others a fraction of a millimeter away, the artificial stimulus inhibits ongoing pain.

 Some drugs delivered intravenously can serve as rewards. Most drugs that are selfadministered by humans are also selfadministered by laboratory animals. The most potent drug rewards include the psychomotor stimulants (e.g., amphetamine, cocaine) and the opiates (heroin, morphine).

 These drugs are self-administered by laboratory animals that have surgically implanted intravenous catheters. Animals quickly learn to press a lever to intravenously self-administer drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

 addiction is defined as a behavioral syndrome where a drug seems to exert extreme control over the individual's behavior and is not defined by physiological withdrawal reactions such as those accompanying abstinence from some drugs.

Incubation of addiction
Using a rat model of craving and relapse, investigators found timedependent increases in cue-induced cocaine seeking over the first months of withdrawal from cocaine, suggesting that drug craving incubates over time.

The Pursuit of Pleasure: When Does it Become Pathological?

Simple activation of brain reward systems does not constitute addiction! the extreme control of behavior exemplified by a deterioration in the ability of normal rewards to govern behavior (termed motivational toxicity)is the distinguishing feature of an addiction.

 Some drugs quickly and uniformly exert extreme control over behavior (e.g., cocaine, heroin), while other substances exert a much less potent influence on behavior (e.g., moderate alcohol consumption)