The principle of operant selection is examined as a prototype of cultural selection, and the role of the social environment is suggested as the critical element in the emergence of cultural phenomena. Operant contingencies are compared to cultural selection contingencies, designated as metacontingencies. Both of these types of contingency relations result in evolving lineages of recurrences tha...

extended abstract introduction the widespread and great inequalities in income generation, commonwealth, job opportunities and developmental facilities between urban and rural areas, have leaded the rural population towards the decline and in some instances the rural exodus. additionally, the rural poverty and deprivation has also caused major urban crisis, due to the vast rural migration and ...

New neurons are continuously generated in the adult mammalian olfactory bulb. The role of these newborn neurons in olfactory learning has been debated. Blocking the addition of neurons has been reported either to result in memory alteration or to have no effect at all (Imayoshi et al., 2008; Breton-Provencher et al., 2009; Lazarini et al., 2009; Sultan et al., 2010). These discrepancies may hav...

Food palatability produces behavioral modifications that resemble those induced by drugs of abuse. Palatability-induced behavioral changes require both, the activation of the endogenous cannabinoid system, and changes in structural plasticity in neurons of the brain reward pathway. The ERK intracellular pathway is activated by CB1 receptors (CB1-R) and plays a crucial role in neuroplasticity. W...

In an attempt to dissect classical and operant conditioning in Drosophila melanogaster, we have isolated the gene for ribosomal S6 kinase II (S6KII). This enzyme is part of a family of serine-threonine kinases that in mammals have been implicated in the MAPK (mitogen-activated protein kinase) signaling cascade controlling (among other processes) synaptic plasticity (long-term potentiation/long-...

The rat’s ability to vary its whisking “strategies” to meet the functional demands of a discriminative task suggests that whisking may be characterized as a “voluntary” behavior --an operant--and like other operants, should be modifiable by appropriate manipulations of responsereinforcer contingencies. To test this hypothesis we have used high-resolution, optoelectronic “real-time” recording pr...

We tested non-musicians and musicians in an auditory psychophysical experiment to assess the effects of timbre manipulation on pitch-interval discrimination. Both groups were asked to indicate the larger of two presented intervals, comprised of four sequentially presented pitches; the second or fourth stimulus within a trial was either a sinusoidal (or "pure"), flute, piano, or synthetic voice ...

Noradrenaline is released throughout the forebrain from locus coeruleus (LC) projections in close temporal proximity to emotional and goal-directed events. To examine interactive influences of these processes on LC neuronal activity, we used a task where Pavlovian and operant processes vary and can be easily identified. We recorded 69 single LC neurons from two monkeys performing a task where c...

Operant conditioning of the head-waving response in Aplysia, as well as conditioning of the electrical activity of identified neck muscles, can be induced readily when bright light is used as aversive reinforcement (Cook and Carew, 1986, 1989b). A cellular analysis of this type of operant conditioning requires an understanding of the neural circuitry that underlies the reinforcement pathways in...