Basic Sciences to Psychiatry Lecture 2011

1. ETHOLOGY
THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF
ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

2. NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
Lorenz, Frisch, and Tinbergen

3. Study of Animal Behavior
 Comparative Psychology
 Branch of experimental psychology
 Influenced by Darwin and Pavlov
 Study of animal behavior in the context of
what is known about human psychology
 Ethology
 Branch of biology, in particular zoology
 Observational rather than experimental
 Study of animal behavior in the context of
what is known about animal anatomy and
physiology

4. Strengths and Limitations
 Ethology
 What animals do,
under what conditions
 Sequence of normal
behavior
 Some species difficult
to observe
 Little about causes

5. Strengths and Limitations
 Comparative
psychology
 Control variable
influencing behavior
 Can test ability and
capacities
 Lab is artificial – may
not see full range of
behavior

6. Pinky and the Brain
Pinky and the Brain are two
genetically engineered lab
mice living at Acme Labs. The
Brain is a genius, while Pinky
is somewhat insane. The two
mice initiate creative and
hilarious schemes for world
domination, only to have them
ultimately fail. However, with
great persistence, they
continue working each night to
"TRY TO TAKE OVER THE
WORLD!"

7. Innate Behavior
Animal
Behavior
Innate
Behavior
Learned
Behavior
Taxes Reflexes Instinct
Behavior that is more
or less permanently
altered as a result of
the experience of the
individual organism
Behavior determined by the
“hard-wiring” of the nervous
system. It is usually inflexible,
a given stimulus triggering a
given response.
Inborn
Rather inflexible
More complex than reflexes
The entire body participates in
instinctive behavior. Instincts are
inherited just as the physical structure

8. LORENZ’S RESEARCH
Fixed Action Patterns
 Every species has a repertoire
of stereotyped behaviours
called Fixed Action Patterns.
 Innate
 Species-typical
 as characteristic of the
species as shared structural
features
 FAP proceeds in the absence
of the triggering stimulus once
triggered by sign stimuli
Greylag geese

9. Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs)
Instinctive responses that would occur reliably in the presence of
identifiable stimuli (sign stimuli or releasing stimuli)

10. The natural world is full of examples of releasers (sign stimuli) that have
evolved to allow communication between animals. Some of the most
colourful examples are the bright coloured plumage of male birds that help
them attract mates.

11. Releasers of Instinctive
Behaviorthe female three-spined stickleback
normally follows the red-bellied male
to the nest that he has prepared
He
guides
her into
the nest
and then
prods the
base of her
tail. She then
lays eggs in
the nest.
After doing so, the male
drives her from the nest,
enters it himself, and
fertilizes the eggs.
 Signals that trigger instinctive
acts (FAP) are called releasers
 Once a particular response is
released, it usually runs to
completion even though the
stimulus has been removed
 the female will follow almost any
small red object to the nest, and
 any object touching her near the
base of her tail will cause her to
release her eggs.

12. Human 'Universal' Or FAP
 Lorenz claimed that caring for young (and the
associated affective responses) are FAPs.
 The sign stimuli are:
 Head large in proportion to the body
 Protruding forehead large in proportion to the size of
the rest of the face
 Large ears and eyes below the midline of the head
 Small nose
 Short thick extremities
 Rounded body shape
 Soft elastic body surfaces
 Round protruding cheeks

13. Human FAP

14. PHOTO 1: The inability to satisfy urges or desires tends to "bottle up"
excitation, and this-in man as in animals-results in "displacement activities."
Scratching and picking the nose or teeth-even smoking and drinking may then
act purely as safety valves. This is another innate and universal form of
behavior.
PHOTO 2: Dismay at the receipt of bad news, portrayed by a Japanese actress.
The actor seeks to emphasize typical features and transmit "supernormal
stimuli": a tense facial expression, downward-curving lips, a furrowed brow, a
suggestion of weeping and suppressed sobs
PHOTO 3: Opening the mouth is a universal sign of curiosity. The South
American Indian girl in our first picture is giving an involuntary performance
of this innate movement. The three other pictures show one Italian listening
intently to another. His mouth, too, is open – in fact our film showed that it
remained so for more than a minute. This is probably another instance in
which an expression of genuine curiosity has degenerated into a conventional
mark of courtesy denoting interest on the part of the listener.

15. Interaction Between Internal and
External Stimuli
 Instinctive behavior often depends
on conditions in the internal
environment.
 In many vertebrates courtship and
mating behavior will not occur unless
sex hormones (estrogens in females,
androgens in males) are present in the
blood.
 When stimulated by sex hormones in
its blood supply, the hypothalamus
initiates the activities leading to mating.

16. Interaction Between Internal And
External Stimulation
 According to Lorenz's theory, the type of
FAP exhibited by an animal is a function of
 the amount of accumulated action specific
energy (internal motivational state) and
 the sign stimuli (external stimulation) to which
the animal is exposed.

17. FAP (internal motivational state) versus
Sign Stimuli (external stimulation)

18. Konrad Lorenz' Psychohydraulic Model attempted to make sense out of his
observations of animal behavior, particularly that of birds. It borrowed from Freud's
theory, seeing instincts (Fixed Action Patterns) in terms of individual energy sources,
released by specific stimuli in the environment.

19. The model also accounts for the displacement behaviors, (when animals in the grips
of simultaneous and incompatible impulses engage in an unrelated and irrelevant
behavior) and vacuum behaviors (when FAPs occur in the absence of the usual
releasing stimuli).

20. TINBERGEN’S RESEARCH
Displacement Activities
 For example, in a conflict situation, when the need for fight
and the need for flight are of roughly equal strength, birds
sometimes do neither. Rather, they display behavior that
appears to be irrelevant to the situation; for example, a
herring gull defending its territory may start to pick grass.

21. LORENZ’S RESEARCH
Aggression
 Aggression among members of the
same species is common
 It seldom leads to killing or even to
serious injury.
 A certain balance appears between
tendencies to fight and flight,
 The tendency to fight being strongest in the
center of the territory and the tendency to
flight strongest at a distance from the center.

22. LORENZ’S RESEARCH
Imprinting & FAP
A phenomenon exhibited by several species when young, mainly birds, such as ducklings and chicks.
Upon coming out of their eggs, they will follow and become attached (socially bonded) to the first
moving object they encounter (which usually, but not necessarily, is the mother duck or hen)
Imprinting is a kind of learning, albeit with a very strong innate element

23. Inducing Filial Imprinting
The researcher imitates a mother
duck's quacking in front of a
group of ducklings just after they
had hatched. They learn very
rapidly to identify their mother on
the basis of visual, olfactory and
auditory cues
Thus, the ducklings perceived the researcher as their
mother and followed her accordingly.

25. Sexual Imprinting
 Sexual imprinting: Birds learn the characteristics of their
siblings, which later on will influence their mating preferences
as adults.
 Reverse sexual imprinting: when 2 people live in close
domestic proximity during the first few years in the life of
either one, both are desensitized to later close sexual
attraction.
 Sexual imprinting on inanimate objects is a popular theory
concerning the development of sexual fetishism.

26. Animal Communication
 Intraspecies
 Interspecies
 Warning coloration: species such as wasps that
are capable of harming potential predators are
often brightly colored, and this modifies the
behavior of the predator, who either instinctively
or as the result of experience will avoid attacking
such an animal

27. TINBERGEN’S RESEARCH
Supernormal Stimuli
Herring gull chicks peck at a red spot
on their parents's bill to induce their
parents to regurgitate food. Chicks will
also peck at a model consisting of a red
spot against a yellow packground

28. SUPERNORMAL STIMULI
Beauty Lies In The Eyes of Beholder
“Sometimes beauty is characterised in an excessively
exaggerated gender signal or `supernormal stimuli'. Body
moulding (or distorting) clothes and plastic surgery aim to
improve on nature and heighten the impact of selected
features. The current popularity of breast implants and the
huge success of siliconised beauties reflect a modern
appreciation of supernormal stimuli. Cosmetic surgery is
perhaps the most drastic way that women try to improve their
faces and bodies, to create or retain what is deemed attractive.
Although many women claim that cosmetic surgery is
something that they are `doing for themselves', the beauty that
they aspire to is of male creation. It is the male gaze, looking
and appreciating within a sexual context that has been the
most influential arbiter of what we deem to be beauty”
http://templeofthegoddess.org/Newsletters/mothersday2008-supp.htm

29. FAP &
supernormal stimuli
 Some species have evolved
to exploit the fixed action
patterns of other species.
 Replicating the releasing
mechanism required to
trigger an FAP is known as
code-breaking.
Brood parasites provide a supernormal stimulus to the parenting species.

30. FRISCH’S RESEARCH
Bees Communication
 Von Frisch's research
concerned with the
behavior of bees, and
he is most widely known
for his analyses of how
they communicate with
each other, that is, their
language or what is
known as their dances.

31. BEES COMMUNICATION
Round And Waggle Dance

32. TINBERGEN’S RESEARCH
Home Location By Digger Wasps
Digger wasp rely on their visual sense and learn the landmarks by
means of an endogenously programmed aerial circuit.