PERU fishing with guts to report…
A new study by researchers at the Department of Psychology with colleagues at Queen Mary University of London shows the first evidence that fish are able to process multiple objects at once.
This discovery not only proves that fish are more intelligent than his reputation of having a 'three-second memory’ suggests, but, even more importantly, it opens the way to new medical advances that could assist in stroke rehabilitation and treatment for attention deficit disorders.
The study, recently published in the journal PLoS ONE, is the first to identify the 'parallel visual search' (the ability to select an object among many) in the zebra fish.
Visual search involves active exploration of an environment in order to find an object or feature.
Considering the benefits of visual search to find a mate, detect a predator or search dams, the research team suggests to do this efficiently by ignoring distractions should be common among species.
As part of the study, 11 adult zebrafish were exposed to different visual stimuli in the form of circles of different colors on a computer monitor over a period of six days, to assess their capacity for visual processing. Scientists taught the Zebrafish to associate food with a red disc, and then put that disk drives among other distractions.
The study's lead author, Dr Michael Proulx says: “Although vision seems simple and quick, involves a lot of computing power to figure out where things are in a crowded environment. ”.
“The zebrafish is an excellent model organism to study behavioral genetics and neurobiology with its smaller brain and its transparent skin. Now we have discovered their mental sophistication, there is a great opportunity to discover the neural code and genetics of how humans pay attention and apply these results to treatments for people with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or stroke”He adds.
Upon discovering the similarities between fish and humans in the way they process visual information, the study now opens possibilities for the use of Zebrafish research.
“Fish do not deserve their reputation as the 'silly' branch of the family tree of animals; The more we research, the more we realize that they are able to achieve a fairly complex learning and problem solving”Notes Dr. Matthew Parker, Queen Mary University of London, co-author. “This could be due to the fact that being part of a bank, complicated interactions with their environment and rapid processing of large amounts of information are required.”
“Surprisingly, the zebrafish is genetically similar to humans and is incredibly useful for our study of how genes influence addiction and psychiatric disorders, amongst other things”He stresses.
This research adds to the growing knowledge of the intelligence of fish, suggesting that they are capable of much more than previously thought. Other studies have found that fish are able to pick the higher of two groups of objects, count to at least four that have comparatively long memories.
SOURCE: Fis.com
