Gagliardo Anna, Ioalè Paolo, Savini Maria, Dell'Omo Giacomo, Bingman Verner P
Dipartimento di Biologia, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
Eur J Neurosci. 2009 Jun;29(12):2389-400. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2009.06793.x. Epub 2009 Jun 8.
It is hypothesized that a central role of the vertebrate hippocampal formation (HF) in behavior is the learning and operation of a map-like representation of familiar landmarks and landscape features. One critical property of a map is that it should enable an individual to re-orient towards a goal location following a navigational error. To test this prediction on a spatial scale consistent with their naturally occurring behavior, control and HF-lesioned homing pigeons were trained from two locations and then subsequently released, while carrying portable GPS-tracking devices, following a phase-shift treatment. Analyses revealed that the HF-lesioned pigeons were less successful than control pigeons in re-orienting homewards following the phase-shift-induced error in their initial orientation. Furthermore, the observation that HF-lesioned pigeons were found to routinely ignore a land-sea landscape boundary when returning home from one of the release sites suggests that coarse landscape features may be an underappreciated source of navigational information for homing pigeons. The data demonstrate that, on a scale of tens of kilometers, homing pigeons are able to learn a hippocampal-dependent, map-like representation of familiar landmarks/landscape features that can support corrective re-orientation following a navigational error.
据推测，脊椎动物海马结构（HF）在行为中的核心作用是对熟悉的地标和景观特征进行类似地图的表征的学习和运作。地图的一个关键特性是，它应使个体在导航出错后能够重新定位到目标位置。为了在与它们自然行为一致的空间尺度上检验这一预测，对对照组和海马结构受损的归巢鸽从两个地点进行训练，然后在进行相位偏移处理后，给它们佩戴便携式GPS跟踪设备并随后放飞。分析表明，在相位偏移导致初始定向出错后，海马结构受损的鸽子在重新定向回家方面不如对照组鸽子成功。此外，观察发现，当从其中一个放飞地点回家时，海马结构受损的鸽子经常会忽略陆海景观边界，这表明粗略的景观特征可能是归巢鸽未被充分认识的导航信息来源。数据表明，在数十公里的尺度上，归巢鸽能够学习一种依赖海马体的、类似地图的熟悉地标/景观特征表征，这种表征能够支持导航出错后的纠正性重新定向。
