For group 1 rats learn the maze and was rewarded food

For Group 1, rats learn the maze and was rewarded
food for navigation from start to end. Food is placed in food box and separated.
n By learning the maze with reward, first group showed that eventually rats learnt the
maze and were able to do so without errors
n For Group 2, rats were placed in maze but didn’t receive any rewards or
reinforcements for completing the maze/ success. Although they got better, they still
continued to make errors i.e. without rewards, there seem to be less to learn
n For Group 3, rats learnt the maze but received no reward for first 10 days of learning
and on 11
th
day, they received a food reward. This was called delayed reward
condition. A single reinforcement made rats learn the maze in few trials and almost
make as few errors as Group 1
n Tolman then concluded that it’s unlikely they learn by rewards because when they
weren’t given a reward, they were still motivated to learn for every trial. According
to Tolman, they were learning cognitive map as internal representation of maze. This
was the earliest evidence that internal representations give rise to behaviors
n Decades after this pioneering study, simpler animals were
shown to possess cognitive maps. German researcher showed
that bees can locate source of food by forming an internal map
about its location and using precise communication i.e. bees
and waggle dance to tell the location of flowers
n The duration of the waggle indicates the distance to nectar
source. The longer the waggle, the further the flower. Angle

of the dance tells the direction of the flower in relation to the sun
n Another example is homing pigeons which have complex
internal maps to return home from great distances
n Left part of hippocampus plays an important role. Lesion to this
region leads pigeons with impaired ability to return home.
Right hippocampus is important for global features of
environment such as geometry of space. Hippocampus is
important for formation of human cognitive maps in spatial
memory as well
n In a study known as London Taxi Driver Study, taxi driver who
has an impressive knowledge of route and maps was studied.
In particular, researcher studied posterior hippocampus which is known to be essential
for spatial memory. They did a brain scan of drivers before and after the training. They
found that at the end of training, it grows physically larger. The maps they learnt
reshaped drivers’ brain anatomy and longer training causes bigger in size
n In a newer study, they found that drivers who passed the test had larger hippocampus
compared to those who failed the test. They also found that while these drivers had
excellent memory of maps and enlargement of hippocampus, it was at the expense of
other visual abilities. The anterior hippocampus for visual memory was smaller for
these people compared to control people. This suggests that in order to achieve great
spatial cognitive maps, it takes away other related abilities
Cognitive Maps and The Hippocampus
l
O’Keefe and Nadel focused on hippocampus to explain Tolman’s results in 1978
n