Physiopsychological study of animal visual pattern learning

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Following four experiments were carried out to study biopsychological mechanisms of visual pattern learning in birds. The first two experiments clarified two points. 1) tectofugal visual pathway has a cruicial role in interhemispheric transfer of visual pattern discrimination in pigeons, and 2) the birds can learn monocular discrimination with their ipsilateral visual system. Using discriminative training of dot patterns displayed on a computer- controlled TV screen, the third experiment demonstrated a failure of prototype learning in the pigeon. That is, the birds cannot abstract a prototype from its distorted samples. This result suggests species difference of pattern discrimination between birds and humans. The fourth experiments showed that lesions of the ectostriatum caused deficits in discrimination of complex visual concept. On the other hand, lesions of neostriatum did not cause any deficits in the visual discrimination learning. Thus, discrimination of complex visual pattern is processed by the tectofugal visual patway. This result agrees with those obtained from the first two experiments.