title: Habituation to sound stimulation in detelencephalated pigeons (Columba livia).
abstract: Habituation to sound stimulation was analyzed in terms of the functional role of the telencephalon in learning. Sixteen pigeons were exposed to 1000-Hz, 83-dB, 1-s sound (stimulus A) at 30-s intervals until there was habituation of the exploratory and pre-exploratory responses. The learning criterion was 10 trials without the occurrence of these responses. Twenty-four hours after habituation to stimulus A the birds were tested with a 500-Hz, 85-dB, 1-s sound (stimulus B). On the day following habituation to stimulus B, the birds of the experimental group (N = 8) suffered ablation of the telencephalon and the birds of the control group (N = 8) had sham surgery. Retesting with the same sequence of procedures was carried out 10 days after surgery. In the POST-lesion situation there was a decrease of the number of habituation trials to stimulus A (P less than 0.01) and to stimulus B (P less than 0.05) by experimental pigeons compared to the PRE-lesions situation. The data suggest an interaction of a facilitatory effect of the lesion and long-term learning effects.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisiologia e Biofísica, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil.
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Toledo
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Ferrari
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D010856:Columbidae; D005106:Exploratory Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology*; D013687:Telencephalon / Q000502:physiology* / Q000601:surgery