Friday, May 1, 2026
Avian Hippocampus Spatial cognition
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Front Psychol. 2022 Sep 23;13:1005726. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1005726
Spatial cognition and the avian hippocampus: Research in domestic chicks
Anastasia Morandi-Raikova 1, Uwe Mayer 1,*
Introduction
Domestic chickens are ground-living animals. Thanks to their precocial development young chicks provided an important developmental model for the study of many cognitive functions (Rosa-Salva et al., 2021).
Chicks have been also widely used for the study of spatial orientation, complementing the research on spatial cognition in other birds, which almost exclusively used adult animals.
Chicks can locate a goal using local cues as a beacon (Regolin et al., 1995), egocentric information (Vallortigara, 1996), distances (Vallortigara and Zanforlin, 1986; Chiesa et al., 2006), and topographical features of the environment (Rashid and Andrew, 1989).
They can orient in relation to free-standing objects (Morandi-Raikova et al., 2020) and find the center of a square-shaped enclosure in relation to the walls (Tommasi et al., 1997; Tommasi and Vallortigara, 2000).
Chicks can use view matching strategies (“snap-shot memories”) of the visual scenes for navigation (Dawkins and Woodington, 2000; Pecchia and Vallortigara, 2010a; Pecchia et al., 2011; but see Lee et al., 2012) and can also orient by the shape (“geometry”) of a rectangular enclosure (Vallortigara et al., 1990; Chiandetti et al., 2007, 2015; Mayer et al., 2016). In a small scale geometrical orientation task, they can use both the extended surfaces of a rectangular enclosure and a rectangular array of discrete objects (Pecchia and Vallortigara, 2010b, 2012).
Based on behavioral evidence, inferences have been often made on the involvement of chicks’ hippocampus for navigation. However, until recently, only one study directly investigated the role of chicks’ hippocampus in spatial tasks (Tommasi et al., 2003).
We have thus performed a series of experiments using neural activity markers (the immediate early gene product c-Fos) to systematically investigate the involvement of chick hippocampus in different spatial tasks (Mayer et al., 2016, 2018; Morandi-Raikova and Mayer, 2020, 2021, 2022).
Immediate early genes are expressed in response to neural activation and their products are often used to map neural activation in mammals and in birds (Lanahan and Worley, 1998;
Tischmeyer and Grimm, 1999; Smulders and DeVoogd, 2000; Kubik et al., 2007; Golüke et al., 2019; Corrales Parada et al., 2021). Overall, our studies showed remarkable functional similarities in spatial processing between chicks’ hippocampus compared to adults of other bird species and to mammals.
In this paper, we will provide a brief overview of the current state of knowledge on the hippocampal structure in birds.
We will then present an overview of the studies that directly investigated the involvement of chicks’ hippocampus in spatial orientation, hippocampal lateralization of spatial functions and the neural mechanisms behind the encoding of locations in chicks and other birds.
Do chicks have a hippocampus?
Although this issue was debated for a long time, it is now widely accepted that the mammalian and the avian hippocampus are homologous structures (Striedter, 2015). The position and anatomical structure of
hippocampus varies across and within different taxonomic groups. For instance, the hippocampus of rodents lies within caudal pole of the telencephalon.
In primates, however, the hippocampus lies deep within the medial temporal lobe.
This “dislocation” within different mammalian species was probably caused by the expansion of the cortex during evolution. Indeed, ontogenetically the mammalian hippocampus develops in the telencephalon’s dorsomedial sector and remains at that location in both marsupials and monotremes, the two “most primitive” mammalian lineages (Hevner, 2016). This is where subsequent research located the hippocampus in all sauropsids (sphenodon, lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodilians, and birds), amphibians, and cartilaginous fishes. For birds, based on topological and functional comparisons, it has been further suggested that the organization of the avian hippocampus along the anterior–posterior axis might be equivalent to the organization along the dorsoventral axis in mammalian hippocampus (Smulders, 2017; Payne et al., 2021, see Figures 1M,N). Among vertebrates, the only exception is the ray-finned fishes (actinopterygians). Due to divergent neural development, their hippocampal homolog occupies the dorsolateral telencephalon (Rodríguez et al., 2006; Moreno and González, 2007; Mueller and Wullimann, 2009). The connections of the avian hippocampus to brain areas like septum, hypothalamus, brainstem nuclei, and sensory processing areas are also similar to those found in other vertebrates, but not fully identical (Casini et al., 1986; Atoji and Wild, 2006; Striedter, 2015).
अवकाशीय बोध हा प्राण्याच्या पर्यावरणात संचार
Ref
Animals (Basel). 2025 Dec 17;15(24):3628. doi: 10.3390/ani15243628
The Map’s Design: Evolution’s Impact on Navigation and Spatial Cognition
Isabella S Olynik-McLaughlin 1, Diano F Marrone 1,*
Editor: Garikoitz Azkona1
सारांश
अवकाशीय बोध हा प्राण्याच्या त्याच्या पर्यावरणात संचार करण्याच्या आणि त्याच्याशी संवाद साधण्याच्या क्षमतेसाठी मूलभूत आहे. त्यामुळे, या बोधात्मक कार्याचा शारीरिक आधार आणि तो विविध प्रजातींमध्ये कसा बदलतो हे समजून घेणे, पर्यावरण मेंदूची रचना आणि कार्य कसे बदलते हे समजून घेण्यासाठी मूलभूत आहे.
अवकाशीय बोधाचे घटक संपूर्ण प्राणीसृष्टीत आढळत असले तरी, येथे आपण विशेषतः बोधात्मक नकाशे आणि त्यांच्या शारीरिक आधारावर लक्ष केंद्रित करणार आहोत.
याची सुरुवात उंदीर प्रजातीच्या मॉडेलवर लक्ष केंद्रित करून होईल,
जे बोधात्मक नकाशांच्या चेतासंस्थेच्या आधारावरील बहुतांश माहितीचा स्रोत आहे. हे इतर प्रजातींच्या तुलनात्मक विश्लेषणासाठी पाया म्हणून काम करते, हे दाखवण्यासाठी की, जरी ही संशोधनाची दिशा तुलनेने नवीन आणि लहान असली तरी, महत्त्वपूर्ण भिन्नता आढळून आल्या आहेत, ज्या मुख्यत्वेकरून संवेदन आणि संचार या दोन्हीमधील बदलांशी निगडित आहेत, आणि ज्यामुळे अवकाशीय बोधाची अंमलबजावणी कशी होते यात मूलभूत बदल होऊ शकतो. हे नंतरचे विश्लेषण पक्ष्यांवर अधिक भर देते, कारण या प्रजातीमधील अलीकडील माहिती यावर मूलभूत अंतर्दृष्टी प्रदान करते की, बाह्य शारीरिक बदलांना चालना देणारे निवडक दबाव अवकाशीय बोधामध्ये अनुरूप चेतासंस्थेतील बदलांना देखील कसे चालना देतात.
Animals ability to move Spatial cognition
Animals (Basel). 2025 Dec 17;15(24):3628. doi: 10.3390/ani15243628
The Map’s Design: Evolution’s Impact on Navigation and Spatial Cognition
Isabella S Olynik-McLaughlin 1, Diano F Marrone 1,*
Editor: Garikoitz Azkona1
Abstract
Spatial cognition is fundamental to an animal’s ability to move through and interact with its environment. Thus, understanding the physiological basis for this cognitive function and how it varies across taxa is fundamental to understanding how ecology alters brain architecture and function. Although elements of spatial cognition
can be found across the animal kingdom, here we concentrate specifically on cognitive maps and their physiological basis.
This will begin with a focus on the rodent model,
which is the source of the vast majority of data on the neural basis of cognitive maps. This serves as a foundation for comparative analysis of other taxa to demonstrate that, although this line of inquiry is relatively new and small, important variations have been observed, tied largely to changes in both perception and ambulation, that may fundamentally alter how spatial cognition is implemented. This latter analysis emphasizes birds, as recent data in this order provide fundamental insights into how the selective pressures that drive changes in peripheral physiology also drive commensurate neuronal changes in spatial cognition.
1. Introduction
For mobile animals, efficient navigation is a key component of survival.
Navigation permits both approach to rewards and escape from threats.
Given the potential benefits to be reaped from better understanding space, it is perhaps not surprising that elements of spatial cognition can be found across the animal kingdom.
Upon this foundation, however, evolution has sculpted additional cognitive abilities to enable progressively more complex strategies suited to varying ecological niches, culminating in the cognitive map.
Understanding how cognitive maps are implemented physiologically and (importantly) how this implementation varies across taxa promises to deepen our understanding both of the basis for spatial cognition in general and
of how it is shaped by pressures in the natural environment.
Decades of research have been conducted on this topic and have built a relatively comprehensive model for how spatial cognition supports navigation and memory.
Here we first describe many of the general themes that have been uncovered to date in our understanding of spatial cognition, focusing on the rodent model.
This provides a foundation for comparing how variations in these basic principles shape the implementation of spatial cognition across taxa. This latter analysis will focus on recent data, particularly from birds, that have fundamental implications for our understanding of how evolution sculpts the neural architecture underlying spatial cognition. Before focusing on cognitive maps, however, it is worth providing some context on the maps relative to other strategies of navigation, such as path integration.
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