sciencefiction
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- 26 Feb 2013
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The below study is a bit heavy to read but I have copied a quote that seems the least confusing. Anyway, in other words, fish experience "human like" emotions arising from the individual fish's perception of the situation. More below.
Cognitive appraisal of environmental stimuli induces emotion-like states in fish
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13173-x
Emotions have been described as internal brain states associated with expressive behaviours, which humans experience as feelings3. Since animals cannot report the subjective experience of feelings the assessment of emotional states in animals has to rely on the occurrence of specific behaviours associated with internal central states. Thus, from a comparative perspective an emotion can be defined as a brain state, encoded by the activity of specific neural circuits, that is triggered by specific stimuli and that elicits the expression of specific behaviours and other external cues5. From this perspective, the results reported here showing that external stimuli of different valence and salience triggers the expression of specific behavioural profiles associated with specific physiological and neuromolecular states supports the occurrence of emotion-like states in fish. Given that emotional states are often associated with human behaviour this result may sound surprising at first. However, the evolution of affective states (i.e. emotions/mood) in animals has been predicted by theoretical models of adaptive decision-making, since it allows an adjustment of the response to cues of reward and punishment according to the autocorrelation of aversive and appetitive events in the environment and internal condition, rather than using a fixed response threshold. Thus, the modulation of decision-making by core affective states would allow animals to give more efficient responses to a wide range of fitness threatening and fitness enhancing events24,25,26,27. More recently, it has been proposed that these affective states share a number of properties, namely scalability, valence, persistence and generalization, which have been named emotion primitives, that allow their recognition in phylogenetically distant organism, hence opening the study of the biological mechanisms of emotion across different taxa5,6. In a previous study using a conditioned place preference/avoidance paradigm we have shown that Sea Bream exposed to appetitive or aversive stimuli have valence-specific responses (preference vs. avoidance, respectively) that are persistent in time, even when only the CS (i.e. conditioned place) is present28. Thus, in Sea Bream, at least two of these emotion primitives are present.
The fact that in this study the same stimulus presented in a predictable vs. unpredictable way elicited different behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular states suggests that stimulus appraisal by the individual, rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the stimulus, such as its valence, is triggering the observed responses. Therefore, the occurrence of emotion-like states in fish seems to be regulated by the individual’s perception of environmental stimuli. The role of cognitive appraisal in the regulation of stress and emotional states was first proposed in humans and has subsequently been expanded to other animals4,15,16. In fish the occurrence of cognitive appraisal has been documented in different species(e.g.18,28,29,30,31; however, its neural bases have not been investigated yet in fish and the present study provided a new insight into these mechanisms.
Cognitive appraisal of environmental stimuli induces emotion-like states in fish
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13173-x
Emotions have been described as internal brain states associated with expressive behaviours, which humans experience as feelings3. Since animals cannot report the subjective experience of feelings the assessment of emotional states in animals has to rely on the occurrence of specific behaviours associated with internal central states. Thus, from a comparative perspective an emotion can be defined as a brain state, encoded by the activity of specific neural circuits, that is triggered by specific stimuli and that elicits the expression of specific behaviours and other external cues5. From this perspective, the results reported here showing that external stimuli of different valence and salience triggers the expression of specific behavioural profiles associated with specific physiological and neuromolecular states supports the occurrence of emotion-like states in fish. Given that emotional states are often associated with human behaviour this result may sound surprising at first. However, the evolution of affective states (i.e. emotions/mood) in animals has been predicted by theoretical models of adaptive decision-making, since it allows an adjustment of the response to cues of reward and punishment according to the autocorrelation of aversive and appetitive events in the environment and internal condition, rather than using a fixed response threshold. Thus, the modulation of decision-making by core affective states would allow animals to give more efficient responses to a wide range of fitness threatening and fitness enhancing events24,25,26,27. More recently, it has been proposed that these affective states share a number of properties, namely scalability, valence, persistence and generalization, which have been named emotion primitives, that allow their recognition in phylogenetically distant organism, hence opening the study of the biological mechanisms of emotion across different taxa5,6. In a previous study using a conditioned place preference/avoidance paradigm we have shown that Sea Bream exposed to appetitive or aversive stimuli have valence-specific responses (preference vs. avoidance, respectively) that are persistent in time, even when only the CS (i.e. conditioned place) is present28. Thus, in Sea Bream, at least two of these emotion primitives are present.
The fact that in this study the same stimulus presented in a predictable vs. unpredictable way elicited different behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular states suggests that stimulus appraisal by the individual, rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the stimulus, such as its valence, is triggering the observed responses. Therefore, the occurrence of emotion-like states in fish seems to be regulated by the individual’s perception of environmental stimuli. The role of cognitive appraisal in the regulation of stress and emotional states was first proposed in humans and has subsequently been expanded to other animals4,15,16. In fish the occurrence of cognitive appraisal has been documented in different species(e.g.18,28,29,30,31; however, its neural bases have not been investigated yet in fish and the present study provided a new insight into these mechanisms.
I am going to catch it on camera because it is really funny. The first time I saw him I was stumped...
