Lateral forebrain lesions affect pecking accuracy in the pigeon

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Animal Behavior

Background:

• Pigeons (Columba livia) were trained on a visual discrimination task.
• The task involved preferentially pecking the centermost element of a concentric key array.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the role of the lateral telencephalon in visual attention and motor control.
• To assess the effects of lateral telencephalon lesions on a learned visual discrimination task.

Main Methods:

• Pigeons were trained to criterion on a peck localization task.
• Surgical lesions were made to the lateral telencephalon in trained subjects.
• Post-lesion performance was analyzed for changes in peck localization accuracy.

Main Results:

• Lesions initially appeared to improve performance, with more pecks directed centrally.
• Closer analysis revealed this was not due to enhanced peck localization.
• The improvement was attributed to a loss of mandibular gape control.

Conclusions:

• The lateral telencephalon is not solely responsible for peck localization accuracy.
• Mandibular gape control may influence the interpretation of performance in such tasks.
• Further research is needed to fully understand the function of the lateral telencephalon in visual-guided behavior.