http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/04/18/1202576109.abstract?sid=fdb3d102-b1fa-4e19-a59a-5a3e2c666412
Abstract
Sorting objects and events into categories and concepts is a
fundamental cognitive capacity that reduces the cost of learning every
particular situation encountered in our daily lives. Relational
concepts such as “same,” “different,” “better than,” or “larger
than”—among others—are essential in human cognition because they allow
highly efficient classifying of events irrespective of physical
similarity. Mastering a relational concept involves encoding a
relationship by the brain independently of the physical objects linked
by the relation and is, therefore, consistent with abstraction
capacities. Processing several concepts at a time presupposes an even
higher level of cognitive sophistication that is not expected in an
invertebrate. We found that the miniature brains of honey bees rapidly
learn to master two abstract concepts simultaneously, one based on
spatial relationships (above/below and right/left) and another based
on the perception of difference. Bees that learned to classify visual
targets by using this dual concept transferred their choices to
unknown stimuli that offered a best match in terms of dual-concept
availability: their components presented the appropriate spatial
relationship and differed from one another. This study reveals a
surprising facility of brains to extract abstract concepts from a set
of complex pictures and to combine them in a rule for subsequent
choices. This finding thus provides excellent opportunities for
understanding how cognitive processing is achieved by relatively
simple neural architectures.
Juanse Barros J.
APIZUR S.A.
Carrera 695
Gorbea - CHILE
+56-45-271693
08-3613310
http://apiaraucania.blogspot.com/[log in to unmask]
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