Comments on the presentation of Felicity Huntingford & Victoria Braithwaite Fish expert meeting 29th-30rd November 2010 Dr. Ruud van den Bos Behavioural Neuroscience Department of Animals in Science and Society Faculty of Veterinary Science Utrecht University

Opening remarks Understanding emotion/cognition-brain-environment relationships in fish species: a challenge! Ruud van den Bos, Biotechniek 49(2): (2010) Key-elements: emotion/cognition (behavioural responses); brain structures (homology) – variation (within species, between species) A case of convergent evolution or… Great minds think alike or… to be more precise a great (Felicity-Victoria) and small mind (Me) think alike… whatever it is…. minds stimulate one another: comments on: level of knowledge, emotions, dorsal pallium, behavioural expressions, variation.

What do we know? Northcutt (2008)

What do we know? Nieuwenhuys (2009); Northcutt (2008) Ray- finned fish (n=1) (n=2) (n=6) (n=0) Forebrain organisation

Disclaimer about definitions To address public concern, we must consider not just the functional responses fish make to challenge but also what they feel Ultimately it is impossible to know what a fish (or any non-human animal) feels and the best we can do it to draw deductions from as many sources of indirect evidence as possible

Some reflections on emotions Difference between ‘how it feels’ and ‘the fact that you feel, regardless of how it feels’ (van den Bos, 2000); … ‘how’ is impossible to study (as yet), ‘that’ may be subject of study (for now); … under the condition: we are able to define a role for emotions in the organisation/programming of behaviour (life-history, behavioural domain); … in other words: what is the difference between ‘having emotions’ and ‘not having emotions’; … ‘how’ may be dependent on specific sensory information, ‘that’ may be dependent on the presence of neuronal networks per se;

Goal-directed behaviour using conditioned taste-aversion (devaluation procedure; Tony Dickinson, Bernard Balleine…) Animals are trained to reach a certain level of performance lever Sugar pellet

…….experimental animals receive an injection of LiCl after consuming sugar pellets in their home-cage; control animals receive an injection of saline; LiCl makes rats ill… Saline/LiCl

……rats are allowed to consume sugar pellets a couple of days later….. Do not consume pellets LiCl rats: Consume pellets saline rats:

…then they are returned to the box again in an extinction task… lever

…...alternatives Lever presses Saline rats LiCl rats Goal-directed behaviour trials Lever presses trials Saline rats LiCl rats Habit behaviour

Act on basis of: if I press then I receive X which is nice/bad Expect sugar pellets = Yuk…… Expect sugar pellets = Nice… Do not act act

Pitfalls…. Schwabe & Wolf (2009)

Pitfalls…. Dias-Ferreira et al. (2009) Paralleled by changes in medial prefrontal cortex and striatal areas

stress promotes habit-like behaviour…. In humans in a spatial task (Schwabe et al., 2007) In mice in a spatial task (see Schwabe et al., 2010)

Some reflections on emotions Devaluation paradigm suggests: crucial role of emotions: being able to adapt behaviour to the changing value of stimuli; Data by Damasio in decision-making paradigms suggest a similar role; Testing difference between ‘having emotion’ and ‘not having emotion’: goal-directed versus habits (akin to trace- and delay-conditioning); But: acute/chronic stress may interfere with this paradigm by shifting activity in the brain towards habit learning…… Species, life-history, behavioural domain, all or some?

Behavioural expressions

Dorsal pallium Nieuwenhuys (2009)

Dorsal pallium Broglio et al. (2010) Vargas et al. (2009)

Research scheme What is the role of emotional/cognitive capacity in the organisation/programming of behaviour (species-environment interaction; including when will they start to play a role (life-history), in which behavioural domain and do species/individual differences exist)? Which experiments reveal the difference between ‘having’ and ‘not having’ this emotional/cognitive capacity (including the relation with the underlying neuro-anatomy)?