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Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot

Animals can organize their behavior with respect to other moving animals or objects; when hunting or escaping a predator, when migrating in groups or during various social interactions. In rats, we aimed to characterize spatial behaviors relative to moving objects and to explore the cognitive mechan...

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Autores principales: Ahuja, Nikhil, Lobellová, Veronika, Stuchlík, Aleš, Kelemen, Eduard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7689095/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33281571
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.576350
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author Ahuja, Nikhil
Lobellová, Veronika
Stuchlík, Aleš
Kelemen, Eduard
author_facet Ahuja, Nikhil
Lobellová, Veronika
Stuchlík, Aleš
Kelemen, Eduard
author_sort Ahuja, Nikhil
collection PubMed
description Animals can organize their behavior with respect to other moving animals or objects; when hunting or escaping a predator, when migrating in groups or during various social interactions. In rats, we aimed to characterize spatial behaviors relative to moving objects and to explore the cognitive mechanisms controlling these behaviors. Three groups of animals were trained to avoid a mild foot-shock delivered in one of three positions: either in front, on the left side, or on the right side of a moving robot. We showed the rats can recognize and avoid these specific areas. The avoidance behavior specific for the left or right side of the robot demonstrated animals not only react to “simple” stimuli such as increasing noise level or growing retinal image of an approaching object, but they process their spatial position relative to the object. Using an all-white robot without prominent visual patterns that would distinguish its different sides, we showed that the behavior does not depend on responses to prominent visual patterns, but that the rats can guide their navigation according to geometrical spatial relationship relative to the moving object. Rats’ competence for navigation in space defined by a moving object resembles navigation abilities in stationary space. Recording of hippocampal single unit activity during rat’s interaction with the robot proved feasibility of the task to uncover neuronal mechanism of this type of navigation.
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spelling pubmed-76890952020-12-03 Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot Ahuja, Nikhil Lobellová, Veronika Stuchlík, Aleš Kelemen, Eduard Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience Animals can organize their behavior with respect to other moving animals or objects; when hunting or escaping a predator, when migrating in groups or during various social interactions. In rats, we aimed to characterize spatial behaviors relative to moving objects and to explore the cognitive mechanisms controlling these behaviors. Three groups of animals were trained to avoid a mild foot-shock delivered in one of three positions: either in front, on the left side, or on the right side of a moving robot. We showed the rats can recognize and avoid these specific areas. The avoidance behavior specific for the left or right side of the robot demonstrated animals not only react to “simple” stimuli such as increasing noise level or growing retinal image of an approaching object, but they process their spatial position relative to the object. Using an all-white robot without prominent visual patterns that would distinguish its different sides, we showed that the behavior does not depend on responses to prominent visual patterns, but that the rats can guide their navigation according to geometrical spatial relationship relative to the moving object. Rats’ competence for navigation in space defined by a moving object resembles navigation abilities in stationary space. Recording of hippocampal single unit activity during rat’s interaction with the robot proved feasibility of the task to uncover neuronal mechanism of this type of navigation. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-11-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7689095/ /pubmed/33281571 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.576350 Text en Copyright © 2020 Ahuja, Lobellová, Stuchlík and Kelemen. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Ahuja, Nikhil
Lobellová, Veronika
Stuchlík, Aleš
Kelemen, Eduard
Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot
title Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot
title_full Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot
title_fullStr Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot
title_full_unstemmed Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot
title_short Navigation in a Space With Moving Objects: Rats Can Avoid Specific Locations Defined With Respect to a Moving Robot
title_sort navigation in a space with moving objects: rats can avoid specific locations defined with respect to a moving robot
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7689095/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33281571
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.576350
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