Importance of the hippocampus for the learning of route fidelity in homing pigeons

ABSTRACT: The avian hippocampal formation (HF) is thought to regulate map-like memory representations of visual landmarks/landscape features and has more recently been suggested to be similarly important for the perceptual integration of landmarks/landscapes. Aspects of spatial memory and perception likely combine to support the now well-documented ability of homing pigeons to learn to retrace the same route when homing from familiar locations, leading to the prediction that damage to the HF would result in a diminished ability to repeatedly fly a similar route home. HF-lesioned homing pigeons were repeatedly released from three sites to assess the importance of the hippocampus as pigeons gradually learn a familiar route home guided by familiar landmark and landscape features. As expected, control p

SUBMITTER: Gagliardo A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7423047 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature