Animal Behavior and Intelligence, Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
Behav Brain Res. 2012 Apr 1;229(1):91-105. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2011.12.044. Epub 2012 Jan 9.
Operant discrimination learning has been extensively utilized in the study on the perceptual ability of animals and their higher order brain functions. We tested in this study whether American lobster Homarus americanus, which was previously found to possess ability of operant learning with claw gripping, could be trained to discriminate light stimuli of different intensities. For the current purpose, we newly developed a PC-controlled operant chamber that allowed the animal under a body-fixed condition to perform operant reward learning with claw gripping. Lobsters were first reinforced when they gripped the sensor bar upon presentation of a light cue. Then they were trained to grip the bar only when the light stimulus of a specific intensity was presented to obtain food reward while the stimuli of three different intensities including the reinforced one were presented in a random order. Finally, they were re-trained to grip the bar only when the light stimulus of another intensity that was not rewarded in the preceding training to obtain food while other intensities including the one that was rewarded previously were not rewarded any more. In these training procedures, the operant behavior occurred more frequently in response to the rewarded cue than to the non-rewarded one. The action latency for the reinforced stimuli showed a significant decrease in the course of training. These data demonstrate that lobsters can be trained with the light cues of different intensity as discriminative stimuli under a restrained condition that would allow application of electrophysiological techniques to the behaving subjects.
操作性辨别学习在动物感知能力及其高级脑功能的研究中得到了广泛应用。在本研究中，我们测试了先前发现具有夹爪操作性学习能力的美洲螯龙虾（Homarus americanus）是否可以被训练来辨别不同强度的光刺激。为此，我们新开发了一个由 PC 控制的操作性室，使动物在身体固定的条件下可以用夹爪进行操作性奖励学习。当龙虾看到光提示时夹住传感器棒，就会得到强化。然后，它们被训练只在特定强度的光刺激下夹住棒，以获得食物奖励，而三种不同强度的刺激（包括强化的）会随机呈现。最后，它们被重新训练只在另一个未在之前的训练中得到奖励的强度的光刺激下夹住棒，以获得食物奖励，而之前得到奖励的其他强度则不再奖励。在这些训练过程中，操作性行为对奖励提示的反应比非奖励提示更频繁。对于强化刺激的动作潜伏期在训练过程中显著降低。这些数据表明，龙虾可以在受限条件下被不同强度的光提示训练为辨别刺激，这将允许在行为主体上应用电生理技术。
