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Sgadò P, Pross A, Lamanna J, Adiletta A. Face processing in animal models: implications for autism spectrum disorder. Front Neurosci 2024; 18:1462272. [PMID: 39184326 PMCID: PMC11341390 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1462272] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2024] [Accepted: 07/29/2024] [Indexed: 08/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Processing facial features is crucial to identify social partners (prey, predators, or conspecifics) and recognize and accurately interpret emotional expressions. Numerous studies in both human and non-human primates provided evidence promoting the notion of inherent mechanisms for detecting facial features. These mechanisms support a representation of faces independent of prior experiences and are vital for subsequent development in social and language domains. Moreover, deficits in processing faces are a reliable biomarker of autism spectrum disorder, appearing early and correlating with symptom severity. Face processing, however, is not only a prerogative of humans: other species also show remarkable face detection abilities. In this review, we present an overview of the current literature on face detection in vertebrate models that could be relevant to the study of autism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Paola Sgadò
- Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
| | - Alessandra Pross
- Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
| | - Jacopo Lamanna
- Center for Behavioral Neuroscience and Communication (BNC), Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
- Faculty of Psychology, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy
| | - Alice Adiletta
- Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, Rovereto, Italy
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Volotsky S, Segev R. Figure-ground segmentation based on motion in the archerfish. Anim Cogn 2024; 27:33. [PMID: 38616235 PMCID: PMC11016505 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01873-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/01/2023] [Revised: 04/01/2024] [Accepted: 04/01/2024] [Indexed: 04/16/2024]
Abstract
Figure-ground segmentation is a fundamental process in visual perception that involves separating visual stimuli into distinct meaningful objects and their surrounding context, thus allowing the brain to interpret and understand complex visual scenes. Mammals exhibit varying figure-ground segmentation capabilities, ranging from primates that can perform well on figure-ground segmentation tasks to rodents that perform poorly. To explore figure-ground segmentation capabilities in teleost fish, we studied how the archerfish, an expert visual hunter, performs figure-ground segmentation. We trained archerfish to discriminate foreground objects from the background, where the figures were defined by motion as well as by discontinuities in intensity and texture. Specifically, the figures were defined by grating, naturalistic texture, and random noise moving in counterphase with the background. The archerfish performed the task well and could distinguish between all three types of figures and grounds. Their performance was comparable to that of primates and outperformed rodents. These findings suggest the existence of a complex visual process in the archerfish visual system that enables the delineation of figures as distinct from backgrounds, and provide insights into object recognition in this animal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Svetlana Volotsky
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel
- School of Brain Sciences and Cognition, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel
| | - Ronen Segev
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.
- School of Brain Sciences and Cognition, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.
- Department of Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.
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Rudolf J, Philipello N, Fleihan T, Dickman JD, Delmore KE. Night-time neuronal activation of Cluster N in a North American songbird. PLoS One 2024; 19:e0300479. [PMID: 38512887 PMCID: PMC10956746 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300479] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2023] [Accepted: 02/13/2024] [Indexed: 03/23/2024] Open
Abstract
Night-migrating songbirds utilize the Earth's magnetic field to help navigate to and from their breeding sites each year. A region of the avian forebrain called Cluster N has been shown to be activated during night migratory behavior and it has been implicated in processing geomagnetic information. Previous studies with night-migratory European songbirds have shown that neuronal activity at Cluster N is higher at night than during the day. Comparable work in North American migrants has only been performed in one species of swallows, so extension of examination for Cluster N in other migratory birds is needed. In addition, it is unclear if Cluster N activation is lateralized and the full extent of its boundaries in the forebrain have yet to be described. We used sensory-driven gene expression based on ZENK and the Swainson's thrush, a night-migratory North American songbird, to fill these knowledge gaps. We found elevated levels of gene expression in night- vs. day-active thrushes and no evidence for lateralization in this region. We further examined the anatomical extent of neural activation in the forebrain using 3D reconstruction topology. Our findings demonstrate that Swainson's thrushes possess an extensive bilateral night-activated Cluster N region in the forebrain similar to other European avian species, suggesting that Cluster N is highly conserved in nocturnal migrants.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer Rudolf
- Biology Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States of America
| | - Natalie Philipello
- Biology Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States of America
| | - Tamara Fleihan
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America
| | - J. David Dickman
- Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America
| | - Kira E. Delmore
- Biology Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, United States of America
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Niu X, Peng Y, Jiang Z, Huang S, Liu R, Zhu M, Shi L. Gamma-band-based dynamic functional connectivity in pigeon entopallium during sample presentation in a delayed color matching task. Cogn Neurodyn 2024; 18:37-47. [PMID: 38406198 PMCID: PMC10881935 DOI: 10.1007/s11571-022-09916-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/12/2022] [Revised: 10/12/2022] [Accepted: 11/17/2022] [Indexed: 01/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Birds have developed visual cognitions, especially in discriminating colors due to their four types of cones in the retina. The entopallium of birds is thought to be involved in the processing of color information during visual cognition. However, there is a lack of understanding about how functional connectivity in the entopallium region of birds changes during color cognition, which is related to various input colors. We therefore trained pigeons to perform a delayed color matching task, in which two colors were randomly presented in sample stimuli phrases, and the neural activity at individual recording site and the gamma band functional connectivity among local population in entopallium during sample presentation were analyzed. Both gamma band energy and gamma band functional connectivity presented dynamics as the stimulus was presented and persisted. The response features in the early-stimulus phase were significantly different from those of baseline and the late-stimulus phase. Furthermore, gamma band energy showed significant differences between different colors during the early-stimulus phase, but the global feature of the gamma band functional network did not. Further decoding results showed that decoding accuracy was significantly enhanced by adding functional connectivity features, suggesting the global feature of the gamma band functional network did not directly contain color information, but was related to it. These results provided insight into information processing rules among local neuronal populations in the entopallium of birds during color cognition, which is important for their daily life.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaoke Niu
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
| | - Yanyan Peng
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
| | - Zhenyang Jiang
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
| | - Shuman Huang
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
| | - Ruibin Liu
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
| | - Minjie Zhu
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
| | - Li Shi
- Henan Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Technology, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, ZhengZhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001 China
- Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100000 China
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Wagener L, Nieder A. Categorical representation of abstract spatial magnitudes in the executive telencephalon of crows. Curr Biol 2023; 33:2151-2162.e5. [PMID: 37137309 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.04.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/21/2022] [Revised: 04/03/2023] [Accepted: 04/07/2023] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
The ability to group abstract continuous magnitudes into meaningful categories is cognitively demanding but key to intelligent behavior. To explore its neuronal mechanisms, we trained carrion crows to categorize lines of variable lengths into arbitrary "short" and "long" categories. Single-neuron activity in the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL) of behaving crows reflected the learned length categories of visual stimuli. The length categories could be reliably decoded from neuronal population activity to predict the crows' conceptual decisions. NCL activity changed with learning when a crow was retrained with the same stimuli assigned to more categories with new boundaries ("short", "medium," and "long"). Categorical neuronal representations emerged dynamically so that sensory length information at the beginning of the trial was transformed into behaviorally relevant categorical representations shortly before the crows' decision making. Our data show malleable categorization capabilities for abstract spatial magnitudes mediated by the flexible networks of the crow NCL.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lysann Wagener
- Animal Physiology Unit, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany
| | - Andreas Nieder
- Animal Physiology Unit, Institute of Neurobiology, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
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Pusch R, Clark W, Rose J, Güntürkün O. Visual categories and concepts in the avian brain. Anim Cogn 2023; 26:153-173. [PMID: 36352174 PMCID: PMC9877096 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-022-01711-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/17/2022] [Revised: 10/19/2022] [Accepted: 10/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/11/2022]
Abstract
Birds are excellent model organisms to study perceptual categorization and concept formation. The renewed focus on avian neuroscience has sparked an explosion of new data in the field. At the same time, our understanding of sensory and particularly visual structures in the avian brain has shifted fundamentally. These recent discoveries have revealed how categorization is mediated in the avian brain and has generated a theoretical framework that goes beyond the realm of birds. We review the contribution of avian categorization research-at the methodical, behavioral, and neurobiological levels. To this end, we first introduce avian categorization from a behavioral perspective and the common elements model of categorization. Second, we describe the functional and structural organization of the avian visual system, followed by an overview of recent anatomical discoveries and the new perspective on the avian 'visual cortex'. Third, we focus on the neurocomputational basis of perceptual categorization in the bird's visual system. Fourth, an overview of the avian prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal contribution to perceptual categorization is provided. The fifth section outlines how asymmetries of the visual system contribute to categorization. Finally, we present a mechanistic view of the neural principles of avian visual categorization and its putative extension to concept learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roland Pusch
- Biopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
| | - William Clark
- Neural Basis of Learning, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
| | - Jonas Rose
- Neural Basis of Learning, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany
| | - Onur Güntürkün
- Biopsychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany.
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The effect of progressive image scrambling on neuronal responses at three stations of the pigeon tectofugal pathway. Sci Rep 2022; 12:14190. [PMID: 35986036 PMCID: PMC9391454 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-18006-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2022] [Accepted: 08/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
The progressive image scrambling procedure is an effective way of determining sensitivity to image features at different stages of the visual system, but it hasn’t yet been used to evaluate neuronal responses in birds. We determined the effect of progressively scrambling images of objects on the population responses of anterior entopallium (ENTO), mesopallium ventrolaterale (MVL), and posterior nidopallium intermediate pars lateralis (NIL) in pigeons. We found that MVL responses were more sensitive to both the intact objects and the highly scrambled images, whereas ENTO showed no clear preference for the different stimuli. In contrast, the NIL population response strongly preferred the original images over the scrambled images. These findings suggest that the anterior tectofugal pathway may process local shape in a hierarchical manner, and the posterior tectofugal pathway may process global shape of greater complexity. Another possibility is that the differential responses between ENTO/MVL and NIL may reflect an anterior–posterior map of varying sensitivity to spatial frequency.
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Clark W, Colombo M. Seeing the Forest for the Trees, and the Ground Below My Beak: Global and Local Processing in the Pigeon's Visual System. Front Psychol 2022; 13:888528. [PMID: 35756294 PMCID: PMC9218864 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.888528] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/03/2022] [Accepted: 05/20/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Non-human animals tend to solve behavioral tasks using local information. Pigeons are particularly biased toward using the local features of stimuli to guide behavior in small-scale environments. When behavioral tasks are performed in large-scale environments, pigeons are much better global processors of information. The local and global strategies are mediated by two different fovea in the pigeon retina that are associated with the tectofugal and thalamofugal pathways. We discuss the neural mechanisms of pigeons' bias for local information within the tectofugal pathway, which terminates at an intermediate stage of extracting shape complexity. We also review the evidence suggesting that the thalamofugal pathway participates in global processing in pigeons and is primarily engaged in constructing a spatial representation of the environment in conjunction with the hippocampus.
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Affiliation(s)
- William Clark
- Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
| | - Michael Colombo
- Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
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Xiao Q, Güntürkün O. “Prefrontal” Neuronal Foundations of Visual Asymmetries in Pigeons. Front Physiol 2022; 13:882597. [PMID: 35586719 PMCID: PMC9108483 DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2022.882597] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2022] [Accepted: 04/12/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
This study was conducted in order to reveal the possibly lateralized processes in the avian nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL), a functional analogue to the mammalian prefrontal cortex, during a color discrimination task. Pigeons are known to be visually lateralized with a superiority of the left hemisphere/right eye for visual feature discriminations. While animals were working on a color discrimination task, we recorded single visuomotor neurons in left and right NCL. As expected, pigeons learned faster and responded more quickly when seeing the stimuli with their right eyes. Our electrophysiological recordings discovered several neuronal properties of NCL neurons that possibly contributed to this behavioral asymmetry. We found that the speed of stimulus encoding was identical between left and right NCL but action generation was different. Here, most left hemispheric NCL neurons reached their peak activities shortly before response execution. In contrast, the majority of right hemispheric neurons lagged behind and came too late to control the response. Thus, the left NCL dominated the animals’ behavior not by a higher efficacy of encoding, but by being faster in monopolizing the operant response. A further asymmetry concerned the hemisphere-specific integration of input from the contra- and ipsilateral eye. The left NCL was able to integrate and process visual input from the ipsilateral eye to a higher degree and thus achieved a more bilateral representation of two visual fields. We combine these novel findings with those from previous publications to come up with a working hypothesis that could explain how hemispheric asymmetries for visual feature discrimination in birds are realized by a sequential buildup of lateralized neuronal response properties in the avian forebrain.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qian Xiao
- Department of Biopsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
- Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Research, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- *Correspondence: Qian Xiao, ; Onur Güntürkün, , https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4173-5233
| | - Onur Güntürkün
- Department of Biopsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
- *Correspondence: Qian Xiao, ; Onur Güntürkün, , https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4173-5233
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