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New Nautilus paper out

robyn

Vampyroteuthis
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Jan 19, 2007
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well, at last my first dissertation-based paper is out in the Journal of Experimental Biology. It is, to our knowledge, the first time that learning and memory in Nautilus has been shown. Surprisingly memory expression was very similar to cuttlefish biphasic memory (temporally separate short- and long-term memory). Interesting (or so we like to think!) given the absence of vertical and frontal lobe complexes from nautilus brains.

The citation is:

Crook, R. and Basil, J. (2008). A biphasic memory curve in the chambered nautilus, Nautilus pompilius L. (Cephalopoda: Nautiloidea). J. Exp. Biol. 211, 1992-1998

I can provide a download link for anyone who is interested in the full text but doesn't have access to the journal.

Now, onto the next one.....
 
Robyn,

Thanks for the link! I had no problem accessing the PDF.

Please excuse my basic ignorance on accepted scientific protocol but I noted that the animals did not actually receive food, only food stimulus and wondered if there would be a longer term effect if, after initial light training actual food was presented.
 
Good question! - it is something that varies in conditioning, whether to actually give the reward or instead just to 'hint' at it. In Pavlov's original study his dogs were only ever given the smell of food, so that's been the traditional way. For animals that are really highly food-motivated, like octopus, usually they are given a piece of shrimp each time as a reward during training, but for nautiluses because their metabolism is so slow, if we had fed them then they would probably have ignored us for the next three days...one of the many problems with working with nautilus! We do have some promising results with non-food rewards where the retention times were much longer, so it might very well have an effect.
 

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