NEURAL CONTROL OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR Neuroethology > Itis the evolutionary and comparative approach to the study of animal behaviour and it’s underlying mechanistic control by the nervous system. Neural System > The structural and functional unit of the neural system is neuron, which shares certain similarities regardless of what message they conduct. > The variation in the length and diameter of the axon is important because” the speed of the nervous impulse affects the speed at which animal respond behaviourally” and the thicker the diameter of an axon, the faster the norvous impulse travels along it.[Dugatkin]The Nervous Impulse > Inresponse to an stimulus (such as tactile),a wave of electrical activity sweeps down along the axons of sensory nerve cells that are in contact with the skin. > Not all stimuli produces such a response. » For this process to begin, the stimulus must exceed the nerve cell’s “threshold”. > Threshold is a function of the amount of change in the voltage across a neuron‘s membrane, but what is important is that stimuli that don’t meet this threshold fail to cause the nerve cell to fire,and stimuli above the threshold always cause the nerve cell to fire. > Conduction of impulses occurs via an electrical impulse jumping across the synaptic gap between neurons or,more commonly,the release of a neurotransmitter- for example, acetylcholine.Sequence of neurones Receptors (sense organ) sensory neurone I = way) Intermediate/relay weepor ene EN sensory | motor neurone eso | aiReflexes and behaviour In ll vertebrates, the spinal cord has two main functions, integration of reflex actions and conduction of nerve impulses to and from the brain, establishing connection between peripheral and central nervous system. Areflex arc is the simplest but complete functional unit of the nervous system capable of detecting changes and causing a response.Early Embryo Forebrain (Prosencephaton) Midbrain. (Mesencephalon) Hindbrain (Rhombencephalon) Late Embryo Telencephaton Diencephalon Mesencephalon Metencephaton Myelencephaton Cerebrum. Thalamus Hypothalamus Optic lobes (tectum midbrain nuclei) Cerebellum Pons. ‘Medulla oblongataDifferent areas of brain and functions controlled by them. OCCIPITAL LOBE Ability to recognise objects, vision. TEMPORAL LOBE Hearing, Memory, Meaning and Language. PARIETAL LOBE Senses such as touch,pain,taste, pressure and temperature. Also have language function. FRONTAL LOBE Emotions, reasoning, planning, movements and parts of speech. Also involved in purposeful acts such as creativity, judgement and problem solving.CEREBELLUM HYPOTHALAMUS, THALAMUS PITUITARY GLAND PINEAL GLAND AMYGDALA. ‘Movement, balance, posture and coordination. Also in thinking, novelty and emotions. Body temperature, emotions,hunger,thirst, appetite, digestion and sleep. Control of sensory integration and motor integration. Control of hormone and it helps to conversion of food into energy. Controls growth and maturity. Emotions (happy or sad)CEREBRAL CORTEX ‘MID BRAIN PONS MEDULLA OBLONGATA HIPPOCAMPUS Thinking, voluntary movements, languages, reasoning and perception. Controls breathing reflexes and swallowing reflexes. Motor control and sensory analysis. Breathing. Forms and stores memories.Different areas of brain and functions controlled by them Motor control Touch and pressur Concentration, planning, problem solving Speech [Frontal lobe Parietal lob temporal lobe [occipital lobe O cerebetumThe neuroloical control of behaviour is among the most exciting topics in modern biology and much research in this field has traditionally utilizes a small number of well known hemimetabolous insect models. 10), focused on developmental neuroplasticity in Periplaneta. Neuroplasticity - It is the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual’s life. ‘Most recent work by Ma et al.(2011), targeted the dopamine synthesis pathway in ocusta migratoria,in an attempt to nuravel the importance of neurotransmitter in locust swarming behaviour. Amore widely studied process concerned with neuronal restructuring and development is that of learning and formation of both long and short term memory. Nitric Oxide (NO), plays a role in the development of long term memory,by directing synapse growth via the well characterized protein kinase A and CREB- mediated pathway.1. Complex response to simple stimuli. > Male lida (bee), grasped the workers’thumb as if he were holding a female of his species.£ven though the thumb has only a slight similarity,at best,to a female Ce s pall Some males made repeated attempts to copulate with it before giving up and flying away. > Then it was evident that the bee’s nervous system was designed with some special operating rules. > Several experiments were done by Tinbergen and Lorenz that describes many cases in which animals responded with an elaborate behaviour pattern to stimuli that barely resembled the naturally occurring object that normally triggers the behaviour.2. Neural Control of Instinct Behaviour > Aclassic study by Tinbergen on begging behaviour of newly hatched herring gull chicks shows the neural control of Instinct Behaviour. > Inhis study he knew that begging gull chicks peck at the red dot towards the end of their parents bill, which causes the adult to regurgitate a half-digested fish or some other mouth-watering morsal for its offspring. But he found that two-dimensional cardboard models of gull heads, and even pointed sticks with bands on the end,also stimulated begging behaviour in newborn herring gulls. From this experiment, Tinbergen deduced that when a young gull looks at its parent’s beak,it attends to a few simple cues, which activate sensory signals that are relayed to its brain. Within the brain,other neurons generate a set of motor commands that cause the chick to peck at the effective stimulus - whether it is located on its mother’s beak or piece of cardboard.Instinct Behaviour in gull chicks Model ofl alone wn cortvasting i eid Mosel o ut ( od ead witout do \3. Neural control in survival among Moths The classic work of Kenneth Roeder on the ability of night-flying moths to evade predatory bats. ‘Moths are attracted by the light.When a bat tries to chase a moth, sometimes a moth turn abruptly or dive straight down just before a bat shows up, evidence that at least some moths are able to detect and avoid these predators. Acoustical signals triggers the turning or diving behaviour of moth. The moths are also capable of detecting ultrasonic vocalisation with sound frequencies between 20 and 80 kHz produced by bats.4. Control of escape behaviour in Tritonia Sea slugs > When a Tritonia comes into contact with a releaser-chemicals associated with the body of a predatory sea-star, the slug begins to swim,in the ungainly fashion of sea slugs by bending its body up and down.|f all goes well, it will move far anough away from the sea star to live another day. > This multistep escape response requires two to twenty alternative bends.The slug bends its body through alternating contractions of its dorsal and ventral muscles. These two sheets of muscles are regulated by two large motor cells, the dorsal flexure neuron(DFN) and the ventral flexion neuron(VFN), which fire in alternating sequence. > This pattern of alternating contractions of its dorsal and ventral muscles was explained by two scientists separately, Dennis Willows and P.A.Getting. > Both gave a model to regarding its neuronal control of behavioural pattern.5. Neural control of Honeybee foraging. > Honeybee foragers must navigate outside their hives or nest in search of foods,and the ability to remember and retrieve information from the environment is critical. > In invertebrates, the spatial navigation is most often linked with a cluster of small neurons located at the front of the brain. > This cluster, known technically as the Corpora pedunc is often referred to as the Mushroom bodies, (Capaldi et al =). > It plays a central role in spatial navigation and foraging behaviour in honeybee (Visscher and Seeley, 1982). » When to hey first leave their home hive, rather than immediately beginning a search for food in the nearby environment, would be foragers often turn back towards the nest and hover up and down for several minutes, in what is referred to as an Orientation flight orienting the foragers to the relative positions of their hive in the environment (Willmer and Stone, ). > This study was later carried out by and his team and they suggested that ‘activities related to foraging triggers a series of neural based changes in the ‘Mushroom body volume’ illustrating yet another instance of neural plasticity, (Digger et al.,199 et al., 1993).Other examples of neural control in behaviour. 1. Vocalization in plain din Midshipman fish. 2. Sleep and predation in Mallard duck. 3. Complex code breaking by a wasp. 4, Cortical magnification in the Tactile mode. 5. Circadian rhythm in cricket calling behavior, etc.