Journal Article

Simultaneous mastering of two abstract concepts by the miniature brain of bees

Avargues-Weber, A, Laboratoire d'automatique et de génie des procédés (LAGEP) ; Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 (UCBL) ; Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon-École Supérieure de Chimie Physique Électronique de Lyon (CPE)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Combe, M, Avarguès-Weber, Aurore, Deisig, Nina, Institut d'écologie et des sciences de l'environnement de Paris (iEES) ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 (UPEC UP12)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale - UMR5169 (CRCA) ; Institut des sciences du cerveau de Toulouse. (ISCT) ; Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès (UT2J) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3) ; Université de Toulouse (UT)-Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Toulouse (CHU Toulouse)-Institut National de la Santé et de la

2012

Overview

Sorting objects and events into categories and concepts is a fundamental cognitive capacity that reduces the cost of learning every particular situation encountered in our daily lives. Relational concepts such as \"same,\" \"different,\" \"better than,\" or \"larger than\"—among others—are essential in human cognition because they allow highly efficient classifying of events irrespective of physical similarity. Mastering a relational concept involves encoding a relationship by the brain independently of the physical objects linked by the relation and is, therefore, consistent with abstraction capacities. Processing several concepts at a time presupposes an even higher level of cognitive sophistication that is not expected in an invertebrate. We found that the miniature brains of honey bees rapidly learn to master two abstract concepts simultaneously, one based on spatial relationships (above/below and right/left) and another based on the perception of difference. Bees that learned to classify visual targets by using this dual concept transferred their choices to unknown stimuli that offered a best match in terms of dual-concept availability: their components presented the appropriate spatial relationship and differed from one another. This study reveals a surprising facility of brains to extract abstract concepts from a set of complex pictures and to combine them in a rule for subsequent choices. This finding thus provides excellent opportunities for understanding how cognitive processing is achieved by relatively simple neural architectures.

• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences,CCSD,National Acad Sciences
• Subject: Analysis of Variance / Animal biology / Animal cognition / Animals / Apis mellifera / Apoidea / Bees / Bees - physiology / Biological Sciences / Brain / Brain - physiology / Cognition / Cognitive science / Conditioning (Psychology) - physiology / Conditioning, Psychological / Cues / Honey bees / humans / Insect behavior / Insect colonies / Invertebrates / learning / Life Sciences / Maze Learning / Maze Learning - physiology / Mazes / Mental stimulation / Neuroscience / Pattern Recognition, Visual / Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology / Perceptual learning / physiology / Psychology / Social insects / Social Sciences / sorting / Space Perception / Space Perception - physiology / Training / Visual learning