Insect cognition

In this TiNs paper, Martin Giurfa presents a review of recent experimental literature related to cognition in insects. Of course, the key issue with experiments in this area is to tread the delicate line between underestimating or anthropomorphising the insects we are studying. Martin suggests that “Focusing on the neural bases of insect higher-order learning is a way to avoid this, because the characterization of neural architectures should be a dispassionate endeavor”. Such a bottom-up philosophy is admirable but evidently not always possible and there are still ongoing issues whenever we have to describe insect behaviour in an experimental setting.

For me, the most interesting part of the paper is Martin’s list of future research directions. It is pleasing to imagine what the next 10 years will bring in terms of our understanding of insect cognition.

Martin Giurfa (2013) Cognition with few neurons: higher-order learning in insects, Trends in Neurosciences.

A life with the ants

It is almost impossible to believe that anybody looking at this page wouldn’t have heard of Ruediger Wehner and be aware of the pre-eminent role he has had in insect navigation research. In this biographical paper in the latest Ann Rev Entomol we get a lovely glimpse on the choices and situations that have shaped his career. All in all, it is a simple story of a research agenda driven by passion for insects that do remarkable things and thus demand our attention.

Wehner, R (2013) Life as a Cataglyphologist—and Beyond. Annual Review of Entomology. Vol. 58: 1-18

New Year, new reviews

What better way to start the new year than 2 review articles from the Annual Review of Entomology. Both relate to issues that are integral to the understanding of insect navigation. Perry and Barron review what we know about reward mechanisms in insects. Paulk et al look at our understanding of the visual system of drosophila, something which is going to be key for insect navigation studies as we gradually learn more about what drosphila are capable of with regard to navigation.

Angelique Paulk, S. Sean Millard, and Bruno van Swinderen (2013) Vision in Drosophila: Seeing the World Through a Model’s Eyes. Ann Rev Entomol, 58.

Clint J. Perry and Andrew B. Barron (2013) Neural Mechanisms of Reward in Insects.  Ann Rev Entomol, 58.

How active vision shapes visual input.

To finish the year off we have a extensive review from the Bielefeld group, regarding the ways that insect visual systems are reliant on specific behavioural routines that shape the received input. The key quote from the review’s abstract is this: “The key idea of this review is that biological agents, such as flies or bees, acquire at least part of their strength as autonomous systems through active interactions with their environment and not by simply processing passively gained information about the world.”

Egelhaaf M, Boeddeker N, Kern R, Kurtz R and Lindemann JP (2012) Spatial vision in insects is facilitated by shaping the dynamics of visual input through behavioral action. Front. Neural Circuits 6:108. doi: 10.3389/fncir.2012.00108

The honeybee as a model system

On this forum we are all aware of the value of the honeybee as a model system for research into learning and memory. Occasionally, a review article comes along that reminds us of this and updates the case with recent research. This paper from Randolf Menzel is one such paper but is particularly useful because it highlights the specific methods and technologies that will ensure the honeybee will maintain its position as a effective model animal.

Randolf Menzel (2012) The honeybee as a model for understanding the basis of cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 13, 758-768 (November 2012) | doi:10.1038/nrn3357

View-matching and image-matching

One of the significant contributions that studies of insect navigation can make to the wider field of comparative cognition is to suggest parsimonious mechanisms that might underpin spatial behaviour. One such mechanism is the use of egocentric views, which has been put forward recently as an alternative explanation to the presumed extraction of environmental geometry by vertebrates. In this article, we highlight how this debate (views vs geometry) can only be fruitful if we have a good sense of what information is available in an animal’s view. As an analytical shorthand, image matching is often used, however the important thing to remember is that animal’s views of the world will be filtered, processed and actively generated by movement therefore not always similar to a raw image. Understanding the information available in a view is essential before we can discard the use of egocentric views within a given experiment. For instance, the ability of vertebrates to obtain distance information and to use 3D views for navigation can be achieved egocentrically and included in view-based matching, even though it cannot not accounted by image-matching models.

Wystrach A, Graham P, 2012, “View-based matching can be more than image matching: The importance of considering an animal’s perspective” i-Perception 3(8) 547–549

pdf can be downloaded here <http://i-perception.perceptionweb.com/journal/I/volume/3/article/i0542ic>

Social learning in insects

Here is a fun, short-review paper from Martin Giurfa that highlights how insect learning also extends to the social domain. The social context naturally suggests sophisticated cognition. However, Giurfa cautions us that we need to focus on mechanistic explanations of these behaviours.

Giurfa M (2012) Social learning in insects: a higher-order capacity? Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 57

The perils of comparative cognition

This is another paper taken from the Animal Minds Phil Trans special issue. The article builds on ideas in the paper by Doring and Chittka [http://wp.me/pFSBM-7h] and discusses in general terms the problems of comparing cognitive abilities between species. The paper gives a very readable account of why we should fear top-down approaches and be wary of gross comparisons of neuroanatomy, but isn’t all negative. There are positive promotions of bottom-up evolutionary explanations as well as minimal cognitivve modelling and data-driven approaches, all of which may prove fruitful

Lars Chittka, Stephen J. Rossiter, Peter Skorupski, and Chrisantha Fernando (2012) What is comparable in comparative cognition? Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 367 2677-2685; doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0215

Insect Cognition

Here is a paper from the Phil Trans special issue mentioned below. The review paper from Barbara Webb considers the prospects for cognition in insects. Abstract: “A traditional view of cognition is that it involves an internal process that represents, tracks or predicts an external process. This is not a general characteristic of all complex neural processing or feedback control, but rather implies specific forms of processing giving rise to specific behavioural capabilities. In this paper, I will review the evidence for such capabilities in insect navigation and learning. Do insects know where they are, or do they only know what to do? Do they learn what stimuli mean, or do they only learn how to behave?”

Barbara Webb (2012) Cognition in insects Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2012) 367, 2715–2722

Animal Minds

The most recent volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society reports on a discussion meeting with an Animal Minds theme. There may be a few papers of interest, so here are the listings:

Discussion Meeting
‘Animal minds: from computation to evolution’ organized and edited by Uri Grodzinski, Nicola S. Clayton and Alex Thornton
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B October 5, 2012 vol 367

Alex Thornton, Nicola S. Clayton, and Uri Grodzinski
Introduction: Animal minds: from computation to evolution
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B October 5, 2012 vol 367

Lars Chittka, Stephen J. Rossiter, Peter Skorupski, and Chrisantha Fernando
Review article: What is comparable in comparative cognition?

Arnon Lotem and Joseph Y. Halpern
Research article: Coevolution of learning and data-acquisition mechanisms: a model for cognitive evolution

Cecilia Heyes
Review article: Simple minds: a qualified defence of associative learning

Murray Shanahan
Research article: The brain’s connective core and its role in animal cognition

Barbara Webb
Review article: Cognition in insects

Jackie Chappell and Nick Hawes
Review article: Biological and artificial cognition: what can we learn about mechanisms by modelling physical cognition problems using artificial intelligence planning techniques?

Anthony Dickinson
Review article: Associative learning and animal cognition

Amanda Seed, Eleanor Seddon, Bláthnaid Greene, and Josep Call
Research article: Chimpanzee ‘folk physics’: bringing failures into focus

Esther Herrmann and Josep Call
Research article: Are there geniuses among the apes?

Andrew Sih and Marco Del Giudice
Review article: Linking behavioural syndromes and cognition: a behavioural ecology perspective

Alex Thornton and Dieter Lukas
Review article: Individual variation in cognitive performance: developmental and evolutionary perspectives

Elizabeth S. Spelke and Sang Ah Lee
Research article: Core systems of geometry in animal minds

Sara J. Shettleworth
Review article: Modularity, comparative cognition and human uniqueness