Could it be the combinatory aspect of the smells that intrigues the voles? Why not test A over B, A over C and so on, to see if it’s more than just the literal “over-mark”?
Could the sense of smell in voles be strong enough to detect these smells even after the apparatus is clean? What about switching sides after exposure and cleaning? Putting the PPE side where the REF side was and vice versa?
Have studies been conducted that determine how mild the stench of a conspecific's pheromone can be, and still be detected by a horny male?
Studying episodic memory in animals like this is interesting because (I'm assuming) these animals rely most heavily on different sensory modalities than humans do. I imagine that since humans rely most heavily on vision and hearing that our episodic memories may be encoded and reconstructed using these senses much more so than others, although this also depends on the situation and what kinds of sensory stimuli were most relevant at the time. I would be surprised if research looking at differences in episodic memory between blind/deaf people compared to unimpaired people has not been done already.
But this experiment with the voles is interesting because the animals seem to be forming visual/spatial episodic memories, even though smell seems to be their dominant sense (I don't know how good their vision is). Otherwise, how could they remember which chamber was which with all the odor cleaned out?
I think these articles touch upon some of the same topics we discussed last time; namely, about what constitutes certain cognitive functions, and what are the prerequisites for those functions. Previously, we read discussions about how humans were trying to use themselves as the golden standard for cognition, and were sometimes imposing ecologically invalid tasks onto animals to test them for cognitive function. We also read the somewhat anecdotal article which argued for assuming that animals are at least self-aware due to their native behaviors.
In these articles, we have a similar sort of debate. Ferkin et al. argue that meadow voles have episodic memory, with components of "when, where, and what" functionality. I think their experiments, though somewhat imperfect in methodology, at least demonstrate that something like "when, where, and what" cognitive functions occur in voles. Apparently, however, others claim that episodic memory requires the conscious recollection of personal facts, a concept of subjective time, and the ability to comprehend what has happened in the past, present, and future (basically, the ability to distinguish between past memories and current events). However, loading in all of these prerequisites means that the tasks that animals have to perform to demonstrate episodic memory can get complicated or even non-native to their normal skill set.
I feel like this is a major point of contention in animal cognition experiments. Should experiments be able to directly compare different species' cognitive abilities (basically, both species do the same task), even if the experiment doesn't involve native activity for the animal? Is that even a good comparison? For instance, once it takes you thousands and thousands of trials to get an animal to do something, is that really a cognitive function being displayed? Or is that simply "catching them up" with practice that humans naturally get that captive animals may not get? Also, are we too strict in our definitions of cognitive functions? Does episodic memory REALLY require a conscious awareness of personal history and consciousness of relative time? Or are we wrapping up too many capabilities into one function?
David makes a really interesting point about what their autonoetic memories would be like considering the importance of their other modalities.
I always have an issue with the ontological assumptions that are being made in NHA research. Why is it that the null hypothesis is that they can't consciously recollect things? Why is it that the burden of proof is on the pro NHA minds people? It seems like they should be trying to prove that voles dont have conscious recollection rather than the other way around.
"Scientists, who most value skepticism (i.e. "show me please"), realize that experimentation never proves anything. It only provides the "weight of evidence" for one view or another. From that perspective, we should all now agree that various emotional affective internal experiences [consciousness] have, in fact, been abundantly and empirically validated in other animals. If not, we would have to provide evidence and realistic hypothesis-based argumentation for how environmental 'rewards' and 'punishments' promote predictable learned behavioral changes. If they do so with without arousing brain affective processes in animals, we have a conundrum on our hands, since they routinely have such effects in humans. Thus, at present, skepticism has gone too far, toward the diametrically opposite realm of belief - that something already well demonstrated does not, in fact, exist. In other words, simply saying that certain 'objects and events' of the world 'reinforce' behavior will not do. 'Reinforcement' is not yet a demonstrated brain function; it is a procedure to train animals. That process in the brain is just a conjecture. The existence of certain affects is not." (Panksepp 2011 p. 6)
That quote deals with affective consciousness, but you could expand it to autonoetic memories easily if you assume certain neural architectures.
I agree with Ben in that this all seems kind of like support for abilities I would assume most animals have. The article looking at more/fewer over-marks and the what, where, and when of an event seem to be showing how these animals have survived in the wild. Specifically for the what, where, and when article, if male voles could not encode and remember information in this way, would they be able to successfully mate and reproduce in the wild?
This leads to my general question/comment about the behaviors under investigation. These are behaviors that benefit the survival of voles and the ability for voles to mate and reproduce. So given the nature of these behaviors, it is not shocking that voles would have some form of representation for them, whether you want to argue it is exactly like humans' episodic memory or it is just similar to episodic memory. However, I wonder how these representations would work if the targeted behavior was not so directly tied to survival/natural selection. For example, what if the same set up was used from the what, where, when article, but the scent was of less importance to the male voles (i.e., not something that determines when they can mate, where food is present, or the proximity of a predator). Would the voles be able to hold representations of what, where, and when in this context? I think testing the extent to which these (and other) animals use this type of representation is more interesting than simply testing whether this type of representation exists at all in animals.
Beautiful, relaxing readings. Reminded me of the TV documentaries about animals that make me stand in awe in face of the majestic beauty of nature and especially evolution. Luno might disagree with the last three words, but I certainly agree with him regarding the critical questions he brought in his comment. And if it is true that some scent did remain in the rooms despite the thorough "cleaning" (Steinbeck's short stories come to my mind when I imagine zoologists and their animals in cages). Instinctively I find it suspicious that they did not report what was the procedure and what chemicals they used when cleaning, such that the experiment can be easily replicated. I am sure there are countless papers by biochemistry people describing methods to remove pheromones and their efficacy, such that there must be a "golden standard" for cleaning that ethologists should use in their experiments and report it. Also, if the "unclean" cage hypothesis can be considered, I would like to remind of the possibility of olfactory stimuli change in time. My intuition tells me that it could happen that the olfactory signature varies over time (some chemical components decay faster than others or some slow chemical reaction takes place generating something like a "half life"), which would completely negate the necessity of memory. Assuming that the experiments were performed correctly (which I tend to believe), I agree that the voles are forming visual/spatial episodic memories and I also agree with Whitney when she is rhetorically asking "Does episodic memory REALLY require a conscious awareness of personal history and consciousness of relative time?" I don't agree that much with Benjamin and Blair. It eludes me why Benjamin is against the fact that the null hypothesis is that animals can't consciously recollect things. Is the negation better as a null hypothesis? The way I see it is that from a methodological point of view they HAVE to use some sort of null hypothesis in order to report their work and that's what 99% of work is: simply reporting. Only 1% is overthrowing old claims and models. However, I am imagining that most likely Benjamin is addressing some introductory paragraphs somewhere (which I probably only skimmed through) in which the author indulged himself in some philosophical argumentation (besides the core of the article), in which case Benjamin did not do anything else than his duty... as a philosopher. :) Blair says "Specifically for the what, where, and when article, if male voles could not encode and remember information in this way, would they be able to successfully mate and reproduce in the wild?" I believe that many animals of all shapes and sizes live and reproduce in very complex environments with only what a few ganglions of neurons can offer them, or even less than that.
In the Ferkin 2011 article, he says something along the lines of, if we can show that these voles react to certain scents of conspecifics in a particular way, it would suggest that the voles remember past actions, make decisions, and plan for their future. Couldn’t it also possible be explained that their bodies naturally react with fear, aggression, flight, etc of certain scents, so it’s not the voles remembering. What I mean is that, who’s to say it’s not like how humans experience pain. A child touches a hot stove for the first time, they feel pain and they instinctively jerk their hand away. I would say that the child doesn’t decide to jerk his/her hand away, so why couldn’t the voles actions be explained in a similar way? As far as the vole being sort of led to mates by their scents, couldn’t this be analogous to how humans are unknowingly affected by each others’ pheromones (at least it’s my understanding that this is true)?
I just had a thought. Let’s say that the voles are ‘remembering’ these past scents, but it’s not a conscious process- just that their bodies remember. For example, isn’t there some evidence that newborns can remember their mother’s voice- an unconscious remembrance? So if that is the case- that voles are acting due to this unconscious memory system, is that the same thing as actively remembering? What I mean is, if we had evidence that they have this unconscious memory system, would it be worth the same as evidence to support the existence of an active memory system?
A final note. The author says, “male voles allocate different amounts of sperm during copulation after they assess the risk and intensity of sperm competition… (p. 269)” Doesn’t this seem to be giving the vole way too much credit? Assessing the risk? Is he saying the vole has control over how much sperm it releases?! Assessing the risk? I would think that it’s not doing so consciously, but that it’s reacting physiologically, not under the vole’s control. Was anyone else surprised by this mentioning of the vole assessing the risk? Maybe I’m reading too much into the words, and the author didn’t actually mean a conscious assessment.
It seems plausible that voles have some sort of memory tracking system that helps them find a good mate. However, it is still arguable that if this kind of capacity only works with mating process, is it right to say it is “a capacity?” In order to rule out rival hypotheses, we need to see more experiments. For example, how could we know for sure if the male voles did not rely on their olfactory memories? Did the researchers eliminate the possibility of this factor by sterilizing the chambers? If such memory was based on sensory/perceptive memories, are they the same as memories we possess? Even if they do have similar memory mechanism as we do, how flexible their systems are and to what degree they are similar to human beings’? Their results are definitely interesting, but they are only suggestive and not conclusive. We could never be too careful when we draw such conclusions saying that animals possess certain capacities when they are behaving in a human-like way.
Like Jackie, I was thinking about un/conscious memory. I think it comes down to whether or not you demand that memory must be recounted consciously. If so, we may never know if other species "think" much less have episodic memory (unless that video imaging of thought thing gets crazy good, maybe). Also, like Jackie said, we (people) have many memory traces that are acted upon unconsciously. So in those moments, do we not have memory? I think not, Dear Madam or Sir.
The sperm comment... I think that it's possible that something is affecting it. But again, that can't be a conscious process. That is something I'm certainly not capable of and I have small, but intact episodic memory.
I liked that Ferkin et al., 2008 talked about sense of self, and the above issue. I just wish it had been more. (i've heard enough about scrub jays. What is it with scrub jays, anyway? ha.)
And I'm not going to player-hate and say (outloud) that I think this research is crazy. However, extending beliefs about human women and math ability to voles? Come on, now. I know plenty of female voles that can do math. But cereally folks, I think that is wild speculation and a hint that projection and a deep need to connect our thought processes with other species may be taking place.
Interesting articles! They reminded me of newly-born infants who are also bonded with their mothers via scents, for when they were in Mothers’ womb, pheromones were exchanged; later, through breastfeeding and other ways of physical contact. Another example is like men can detect and be more attracted by a woman’s natural scent, especially by the ovulating woman at unconscious level. If voles have episodic memory as Ferkin’s scent experiments argued, can we infer that babies have episodic memories as well in this way? Or either babies and men or voles just use their physiological instinct? Conversely, can we say the PPE scent that attracted male voles more in the experiments, just because this peculiar smell attracted them, not related with the episodic memory? I am wondering if the experiment added more conditions, like changing to other PPE voles, can voles identify they are different female voles in PPE?
I may be the minority here but I don't think these articles are interesting at all. Firstly, they are not really related to semantics, or much of the rest of the topics from this class. The papers address voles' senses and they use experiments on sexual receptiveness. This, in my opinion, is simply not dealing with any higher-order cognitive abilities, mating and reproduction is the most base-level of survival and natural selection. Some bacteria have "sexes," they are not called that specifically but they have mating type designations of MAT a and MAT alpha. The MAT a type produces a pheromone mating factor that is secreted by the cell and detected only by MAT alpha cells (potential mating partners) using a cell surface sensor that is one of the mating type-specific genes. I don't doubt that voles, when mating, uses cognition, such that their "scent information" will transform into some form of memory, and from it, preference. But again, this is low-level cognitive tasks, and since I'm more interested in human cognition, and the potential applications from animal models, unless there are studies shown that this is somehow also the tendency with humans, they are kind of irrelevant pleasure readings at best.
I liked these. It was a nice change of pace from some of the earlier readings.
Let me see if I can make sense of what I was thinking... Attempt: I think some of the earlier posts were related to what I was thinking about some of these memories being more physiological based (if I was reading them correctly anyway). This could go along with some affective network theories. For example, a certain scent may be related to a past experience with mating, for example. So when they smell that scent again, the mating node would be activated too and it may, more or less, prime them to seek that out, even unconsciously. Okay I'm not sure if that's making complete sense in voles, but maybe?
Also, I agree with Whitney on the note of comparison. What is the best way to "test" cognitive functions: is it comparing different species, or is that unfairly skipping arbitrary spaces on the "continuum" from last week?
I kept thinking 'okay, and?'. It's great that voles can identify conspecifics… this would indeed be evolutionarily advantageous for them. In regards to Christian's comment on Blair's comment: Of course many animals are able to successfully reproduce in their environment in a less complicated fashion. However, for voles it seems as though mating is at least a little more complex in that it may require one vole to be able to identify another. If that is the case, then the voles are simply able to perform a behavior that is necessary for their survival as a species. I think taking these findings as claims that 'voles can do x human cognitive ability' is unnecessary (e.g., in the relative numerousness paper… I'm not so sure that this isn't just the same case as the sperm).
Here's my comment on Sterling's comment on my comment on Blair's comment :) Identifying your mate does seem more complex and it makes a lot of sense, however it was not mentioned in the articles. Identifying your mate does play a role in game strategies, for instance a sheep recognizes her newborn lamb from a crowd of hundreds of newborn lambs, because the strategy is to take care of your OWN genes. Minor identification mistakes incurred a severe evolutionary penalty. Or, to come back to our dear voles, maybe a male will more likely mate again this year with a female that didn't give him problems last year. BUT, this is not treated in the articles. Remember what Blair said: "Specifically for the what, where, and when article, if male voles could not encode and remember information in this way, would they be able to successfully mate and reproduce in the wild?"
My impression, as a non-psychologist, is that the major difference between human and animal cognition and behavioral abilities is the fact that humans (and perhaps, to some low extent, apes and dolphins) have the META skill of reasoning about their reasoning, of being able to perceive their brain processes as tools that can be used or not used, to VOLUNTARILY (at least apparently) apply brain power to tasks outside the immediate neighborhood of instincts and basic survival. And everything is based on the ability for abstraction. This brings me to my last point: I would probably not be able to design a spider web as well as the spider (which has a lot of things, but certainly not a brain) and I am positive that I would not be able to weave the intricate nests of some species of birds. Termites were building arches and support columns (and no termite is able to see or perceive somehow the entire structure of those arches and columns, let alone plan them) long before the hominids became able to put roofs above their heads. Let us not underestimate what natural selection can make "stupid" animals do! Natural selection, however, took a weird turn with humans and the impressive development of our brains allowed them to escape the constrictions of the fight to perpetuate the genes that allowed them to exist. We are the ultimate freaks of nature, creatures capable to end not only our entire species, but all life on Earth with the push of a few buttons. I believe that animal cognition should be taken as the standard, and human cognition only considered a special case that for obvious reasons could be the focus of some studies. But everything should be compared to the animal standard. We are the weird ones, dear colleagues, not the voles. And my ending slogan is: "Voles before humans!"
Could it be the combinatory aspect of the smells that intrigues the voles? Why not test A over B, A over C and so on, to see if it’s more than just the literal “over-mark”?
ReplyDeleteCould the sense of smell in voles be strong enough to detect these smells even after the apparatus is clean? What about switching sides after exposure and cleaning? Putting the PPE side where the REF side was and vice versa?
Have studies been conducted that determine how mild the stench of a conspecific's pheromone can be, and still be detected by a horny male?
Studying episodic memory in animals like this is interesting because (I'm assuming) these animals rely most heavily on different sensory modalities than humans do. I imagine that since humans rely most heavily on vision and hearing that our episodic memories may be encoded and reconstructed using these senses much more so than others, although this also depends on the situation and what kinds of sensory stimuli were most relevant at the time. I would be surprised if research looking at differences in episodic memory between blind/deaf people compared to unimpaired people has not been done already.
ReplyDeleteBut this experiment with the voles is interesting because the animals seem to be forming visual/spatial episodic memories, even though smell seems to be their dominant sense (I don't know how good their vision is). Otherwise, how could they remember which chamber was which with all the odor cleaned out?
I think these articles touch upon some of the same topics we discussed last time; namely, about what constitutes certain cognitive functions, and what are the prerequisites for those functions. Previously, we read discussions about how humans were trying to use themselves as the golden standard for cognition, and were sometimes imposing ecologically invalid tasks onto animals to test them for cognitive function. We also read the somewhat anecdotal article which argued for assuming that animals are at least self-aware due to their native behaviors.
ReplyDeleteIn these articles, we have a similar sort of debate. Ferkin et al. argue that meadow voles have episodic memory, with components of "when, where, and what" functionality. I think their experiments, though somewhat imperfect in methodology, at least demonstrate that something like "when, where, and what" cognitive functions occur in voles. Apparently, however, others claim that episodic memory requires the conscious recollection of personal facts, a concept of subjective time, and the ability to comprehend what has happened in the past, present, and future (basically, the ability to distinguish between past memories and current events). However, loading in all of these prerequisites means that the tasks that animals have to perform to demonstrate episodic memory can get complicated or even non-native to their normal skill set.
I feel like this is a major point of contention in animal cognition experiments. Should experiments be able to directly compare different species' cognitive abilities (basically, both species do the same task), even if the experiment doesn't involve native activity for the animal? Is that even a good comparison? For instance, once it takes you thousands and thousands of trials to get an animal to do something, is that really a cognitive function being displayed? Or is that simply "catching them up" with practice that humans naturally get that captive animals may not get? Also, are we too strict in our definitions of cognitive functions? Does episodic memory REALLY require a conscious awareness of personal history and consciousness of relative time? Or are we wrapping up too many capabilities into one function?
Interesting articles!
ReplyDeleteDavid makes a really interesting point about what their autonoetic memories would be like considering the importance of their other modalities.
I always have an issue with the ontological assumptions that are being made in NHA research. Why is it that the null hypothesis is that they can't consciously recollect things? Why is it that the burden of proof is on the pro NHA minds people? It seems like they should be trying to prove that voles dont have conscious recollection rather than the other way around.
"Scientists, who most value skepticism (i.e. "show me please"), realize that experimentation never proves anything. It only provides the "weight of evidence" for one view or another. From that perspective, we should all now agree that various emotional affective internal experiences [consciousness] have, in fact, been abundantly and empirically validated in other animals. If not, we would have to provide evidence and realistic hypothesis-based argumentation for how environmental 'rewards' and 'punishments' promote predictable learned behavioral changes. If they do so with without arousing brain affective processes in animals, we have a conundrum on our hands, since they routinely have such effects in humans. Thus, at present, skepticism has gone too far, toward the diametrically opposite realm of belief - that something already well demonstrated does not, in fact, exist. In other words, simply saying that certain 'objects and events' of the world 'reinforce' behavior will not do. 'Reinforcement' is not yet a demonstrated brain function; it is a procedure to train animals. That process in the brain is just a conjecture. The existence of certain affects is not." (Panksepp 2011 p. 6)
That quote deals with affective consciousness, but you could expand it to autonoetic memories easily if you assume certain neural architectures.
I agree with Ben in that this all seems kind of like support for abilities I would assume most animals have. The article looking at more/fewer over-marks and the what, where, and when of an event seem to be showing how these animals have survived in the wild. Specifically for the what, where, and when article, if male voles could not encode and remember information in this way, would they be able to successfully mate and reproduce in the wild?
ReplyDeleteThis leads to my general question/comment about the behaviors under investigation. These are behaviors that benefit the survival of voles and the ability for voles to mate and reproduce. So given the nature of these behaviors, it is not shocking that voles would have some form of representation for them, whether you want to argue it is exactly like humans' episodic memory or it is just similar to episodic memory. However, I wonder how these representations would work if the targeted behavior was not so directly tied to survival/natural selection. For example, what if the same set up was used from the what, where, when article, but the scent was of less importance to the male voles (i.e., not something that determines when they can mate, where food is present, or the proximity of a predator). Would the voles be able to hold representations of what, where, and when in this context? I think testing the extent to which these (and other) animals use this type of representation is more interesting than simply testing whether this type of representation exists at all in animals.
-Blair
Beautiful, relaxing readings. Reminded me of the TV documentaries about animals that make me stand in awe in face of the majestic beauty of nature and especially evolution.
ReplyDeleteLuno might disagree with the last three words, but I certainly agree with him regarding the critical questions he brought in his comment. And if it is true that some scent did remain in the rooms despite the thorough "cleaning" (Steinbeck's short stories come to my mind when I imagine zoologists and their animals in cages). Instinctively I find it suspicious that they did not report what was the procedure and what chemicals they used when cleaning, such that the experiment can be easily replicated. I am sure there are countless papers by biochemistry people describing methods to remove pheromones and their efficacy, such that there must be a "golden standard" for cleaning that ethologists should use in their experiments and report it.
Also, if the "unclean" cage hypothesis can be considered, I would like to remind of the possibility of olfactory stimuli change in time. My intuition tells me that it could happen that the olfactory signature varies over time (some chemical components decay faster than others or some slow chemical reaction takes place generating something like a "half life"), which would completely negate the necessity of memory.
Assuming that the experiments were performed correctly (which I tend to believe), I agree that the voles are forming visual/spatial episodic memories and I also agree with Whitney when she is rhetorically asking "Does episodic memory REALLY require a conscious awareness of personal history and consciousness of relative time?"
I don't agree that much with Benjamin and Blair. It eludes me why Benjamin is against the fact that the null hypothesis is that animals can't consciously recollect things. Is the negation better as a null hypothesis? The way I see it is that from a methodological point of view they HAVE to use some sort of null hypothesis in order to report their work and that's what 99% of work is: simply reporting. Only 1% is overthrowing old claims and models. However, I am imagining that most likely Benjamin is addressing some introductory paragraphs somewhere (which I probably only skimmed through) in which the author indulged himself in some philosophical argumentation (besides the core of the article), in which case Benjamin did not do anything else than his duty... as a philosopher. :)
Blair says "Specifically for the what, where, and when article, if male voles could not encode and remember information in this way, would they be able to successfully mate and reproduce in the wild?" I believe that many animals of all shapes and sizes live and reproduce in very complex environments with only what a few ganglions of neurons can offer them, or even less than that.
In the Ferkin 2011 article, he says something along the lines of, if we can show that these voles react to certain scents of conspecifics in a particular way, it would suggest that the voles remember past actions, make decisions, and plan for their future. Couldn’t it also possible be explained that their bodies naturally react with fear, aggression, flight, etc of certain scents, so it’s not the voles remembering. What I mean is that, who’s to say it’s not like how humans experience pain. A child touches a hot stove for the first time, they feel pain and they instinctively jerk their hand away. I would say that the child doesn’t decide to jerk his/her hand away, so why couldn’t the voles actions be explained in a similar way? As far as the vole being sort of led to mates by their scents, couldn’t this be analogous to how humans are unknowingly affected by each others’ pheromones (at least it’s my understanding that this is true)?
ReplyDeleteI just had a thought. Let’s say that the voles are ‘remembering’ these past scents, but it’s not a conscious process- just that their bodies remember. For example, isn’t there some evidence that newborns can remember their mother’s voice- an unconscious remembrance? So if that is the case- that voles are acting due to this unconscious memory system, is that the same thing as actively remembering? What I mean is, if we had evidence that they have this unconscious memory system, would it be worth the same as evidence to support the existence of an active memory system?
A final note. The author says, “male voles allocate different amounts of sperm during copulation after they assess the risk and intensity of sperm competition… (p. 269)” Doesn’t this seem to be giving the vole way too much credit? Assessing the risk? Is he saying the vole has control over how much sperm it releases?! Assessing the risk? I would think that it’s not doing so consciously, but that it’s reacting physiologically, not under the vole’s control. Was anyone else surprised by this mentioning of the vole assessing the risk? Maybe I’m reading too much into the words, and the author didn’t actually mean a conscious assessment.
It seems plausible that voles have some sort of memory tracking system that helps them find a good mate. However, it is still arguable that if this kind of capacity only works with mating process, is it right to say it is “a capacity?” In order to rule out rival hypotheses, we need to see more experiments. For example, how could we know for sure if the male voles did not rely on their olfactory memories? Did the researchers eliminate the possibility of this factor by sterilizing the chambers? If such memory was based on sensory/perceptive memories, are they the same as memories we possess? Even if they do have similar memory mechanism as we do, how flexible their systems are and to what degree they are similar to human beings’? Their results are definitely interesting, but they are only suggestive and not conclusive. We could never be too careful when we draw such conclusions saying that animals possess certain capacities when they are behaving in a human-like way.
ReplyDeleteLike Jackie, I was thinking about un/conscious memory. I think it comes down to whether or not you demand that memory must be recounted consciously. If so, we may never know if other species "think" much less have episodic memory (unless that video imaging of thought thing gets crazy good, maybe). Also, like Jackie said, we (people) have many memory traces that are acted upon unconsciously. So in those moments, do we not have memory? I think not, Dear Madam or Sir.
ReplyDeleteThe sperm comment... I think that it's possible that something is affecting it. But again, that can't be a conscious process. That is something I'm certainly not capable of and I have small, but intact episodic memory.
I liked that Ferkin et al., 2008 talked about sense of self, and the above issue. I just wish it had been more. (i've heard enough about scrub jays. What is it with scrub jays, anyway? ha.)
And I'm not going to player-hate and say (outloud) that I think this research is crazy. However, extending beliefs about human women and math ability to voles? Come on, now. I know plenty of female voles that can do math. But cereally folks, I think that is wild speculation and a hint that projection and a deep need to connect our thought processes with other species may be taking place.
Interesting articles!
ReplyDeleteThey reminded me of newly-born infants who are also bonded with their mothers via scents, for when they were in Mothers’ womb, pheromones were exchanged; later, through breastfeeding and other ways of physical contact. Another example is like men can detect and be more attracted by a woman’s natural scent, especially by the ovulating woman at unconscious level. If voles have episodic memory as Ferkin’s scent experiments argued, can we infer that babies have episodic memories as well in this way? Or either babies and men or voles just use their physiological instinct?
Conversely, can we say the PPE scent that attracted male voles more in the experiments, just because this peculiar smell attracted them, not related with the episodic memory? I am wondering if the experiment added more conditions, like changing to other PPE voles, can voles identify they are different female voles in PPE?
I may be the minority here but I don't think these articles are interesting at all. Firstly, they are not really related to semantics, or much of the rest of the topics from this class. The papers address voles' senses and they use experiments on sexual receptiveness. This, in my opinion, is simply not dealing with any higher-order cognitive abilities, mating and reproduction is the most base-level of survival and natural selection. Some bacteria have "sexes," they are not called that specifically but they have mating type designations of MAT a and MAT alpha. The MAT a type produces a pheromone mating factor that is secreted by the cell and detected only by MAT alpha cells (potential mating partners) using a cell surface sensor that is one of the mating type-specific genes. I don't doubt that voles, when mating, uses cognition, such that their "scent information" will transform into some form of memory, and from it, preference. But again, this is low-level cognitive tasks, and since I'm more interested in human cognition, and the potential applications from animal models, unless there are studies shown that this is somehow also the tendency with humans, they are kind of irrelevant pleasure readings at best.
ReplyDeleteI liked these. It was a nice change of pace from some of the earlier readings.
ReplyDeleteLet me see if I can make sense of what I was thinking... Attempt:
I think some of the earlier posts were related to what I was thinking about some of these memories being more physiological based (if I was reading them correctly anyway). This could go along with some affective network theories. For example, a certain scent may be related to a past experience with mating, for example. So when they smell that scent again, the mating node would be activated too and it may, more or less, prime them to seek that out, even unconsciously.
Okay I'm not sure if that's making complete sense in voles, but maybe?
Also, I agree with Whitney on the note of comparison. What is the best way to "test" cognitive functions: is it comparing different species, or is that unfairly skipping arbitrary spaces on the "continuum" from last week?
I kept thinking 'okay, and?'. It's great that voles can identify conspecifics… this would indeed be evolutionarily advantageous for them. In regards to Christian's comment on Blair's comment: Of course many animals are able to successfully reproduce in their environment in a less complicated fashion. However, for voles it seems as though mating is at least a little more complex in that it may require one vole to be able to identify another. If that is the case, then the voles are simply able to perform a behavior that is necessary for their survival as a species. I think taking these findings as claims that 'voles can do x human cognitive ability' is unnecessary (e.g., in the relative numerousness paper… I'm not so sure that this isn't just the same case as the sperm).
ReplyDeleteHere's my comment on Sterling's comment on my comment on Blair's comment :)
ReplyDeleteIdentifying your mate does seem more complex and it makes a lot of sense, however it was not mentioned in the articles. Identifying your mate does play a role in game strategies, for instance a sheep recognizes her newborn lamb from a crowd of hundreds of newborn lambs, because the strategy is to take care of your OWN genes. Minor identification mistakes incurred a severe evolutionary penalty. Or, to come back to our dear voles, maybe a male will more likely mate again this year with a female that didn't give him problems last year. BUT, this is not treated in the articles. Remember what Blair said: "Specifically for the what, where, and when article, if male voles could not encode and remember information in this way, would they be able to successfully mate and reproduce in the wild?"
My impression, as a non-psychologist, is that the major difference between human and animal cognition and behavioral abilities is the fact that humans (and perhaps, to some low extent, apes and dolphins) have the META skill of reasoning about their reasoning, of being able to perceive their brain processes as tools that can be used or not used, to VOLUNTARILY (at least apparently) apply brain power to tasks outside the immediate neighborhood of instincts and basic survival. And everything is based on the ability for abstraction.
This brings me to my last point: I would probably not be able to design a spider web as well as the spider (which has a lot of things, but certainly not a brain) and I am positive that I would not be able to weave the intricate nests of some species of birds. Termites were building arches and support columns (and no termite is able to see or perceive somehow the entire structure of those arches and columns, let alone plan them) long before the hominids became able to put roofs above their heads. Let us not underestimate what natural selection can make "stupid" animals do!
Natural selection, however, took a weird turn with humans and the impressive development of our brains allowed them to escape the constrictions of the fight to perpetuate the genes that allowed them to exist. We are the ultimate freaks of nature, creatures capable to end not only our entire species, but all life on Earth with the push of a few buttons.
I believe that animal cognition should be taken as the standard, and human cognition only considered a special case that for obvious reasons could be the focus of some studies. But everything should be compared to the animal standard.
We are the weird ones, dear colleagues, not the voles.
And my ending slogan is: "Voles before humans!"