Response to Stimuli

5 Key excerpts on "Response to Stimuli"

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  The Behavior of Animals

  Mechanisms, Function, and Evolution

  • Johan J. Bolhuis, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Jerry A. Hogan, Johan J. Bolhuis, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Jerry A. Hogan(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  We go on to describe quantitative relationships between stimulus and behavioral response, includ-ing discussion of the concepts of sign-stimulus, innate releasing mechanism (IRM), heterogeneous summation, supernormal releaser, and the influences of attention and motivation. Our intention is to show that various classical I N T R O D U C T I O N stimulus perception 13 Stimulus Reception S ensory information to be processed comes from outside an organism’s CNS and must get first in contact with the nervous system via its receptors. This informa-tion concerns basic sensory modalities: • Photoreception: response to radiant energy in the visible wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum (photons). • Thermoreception: response to radiant thermal energy in the nonvisible wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum. • Mechanoreception: response to kinetic energy, including hearing, vibration, touch, balance, etc. • Chemoreception: response to chemical energy, including smell and taste. Particular perceptual capabilities include electroreception (response to electrical energy) and magnetoreception (response to energy of a magnetic field). Nociception, the recep-tion of pain, involves specific cell physiological responses to severe tissue damage caused by thermal, kinetic, and/or chemical energy. The form of energy to which the receptor cell responds determines the sensory modality. Within a sensory modality (e.g., vision), dif-ferent stimulus qualities (color) and stimulus quantities (brightness) can be distinguished. A stimulus, sensed by a receptor cell, is transduced by intracellular chemical processes (see Chapter 5). These lead to a change in the (receptor) membrane potential, which—depending on cell type—can generate nerve impulses. To respond to weak stimuli, receptors may have their own amplifying system.

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  An Introduction to Animal Behaviour

  • Aubrey Manning, Marian Stamp Dawkins(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  We thus begin our study of how animal behaviour ‘works’ by looking at the way in which animal sense organs detect the host of smells, buzzes, flashes and other changes taking place in the animals’ physical environment. Then we will look at how their sensory nervous systems and brains process this unpromising raw material into objects or events that the animals can recognize and respond to. In doing this, we shall see that many of the most important objects in an animal’s world often turn out to be other animals and many of the most significant stimuli to which they respond are in fact signals from other organisms. Understanding how animals detect and respond to stimuli will therefore, by the end of this chapter, have taken us into one of the most fascinating of all areas of animal behaviour: the study of animal communication. What stimuli are and how they act The term ‘stimulus’ means literally ‘little goad’ from the Latin verb stimulare – to goad, incite or arouse – and this describes very well what the term currently means when applied to examples of animal behaviour. An alarm call by one member of a flock of birds incites all the rest to take off. In this case, the effect is immediate, the goad of the alarm call prodding the other animals into action. But at other times the action can be delayed and the effects of a stimulus can seem to accumulate gradually, changing the responsiveness of the animal over a period of time, so that the stimulus does not so What stimuli are and how they act 111 much ‘prod’ as ‘arouse’. The courtship of male doves leading to induction of hormone secretion in the female, which we discuss in more detail in Chapter 4 , is a good example of this. The sight of a male dove courting leads to hormonal changes in the female which make her more ready to take part in nest-building. The stimulus of the male’s courtship is only effective, however, if it is repeated many times.

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  Emotions and Bodily Responses

  A Psychophysiological Approach

  • James L McGaugh(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  2 Stimuli that Cause Bodily Responses Chapter 1 identified the principal bodily responses that will be dis-cussed in this book. This chapter will review some stimuli that cause changes in these bodily responses. The types of stimuli to be reviewed are: (a) simple environmental stimuli, (b) task-related stimuli, (c) fear-producing stimuli, (d) internal self-generated stimuli, and (e) complex social stimuli. The importance of sets and attitudes in determining the physiological responses to stimuli will also be reviewed. SIMPLE ENVIRONMENTAL STIMULI Suppose that a soft but novel noise were to occur unexpectedly while you were reading this page. What, if any, physiological responses would be elicited by such a simple environmental stimulus? Surpris-ingly, a large number of significant bodily reactions would be momentarily elicited. For example,the pupils would dilate, skin conduc-tance would increase, blood vessels in the hand would constrict while those in the head would dilate, the oscillating frequency of the elec-troencephalogram would increase, heart rate would decrease, and respi-ration would become irregular. This set of momentary bodily responses is called an orienting response (OR). The OR is a general cluster of physiological responses that occurs 27 28 Stimuli that Cause Bodily Responses ^The orienting response and its habituation have been extensively studied. One of the most influential papers on the topic was written by the Russian investigator, Sokolov (1960). Another influential article dealing with the heart rate component of the orienting response was reported by Graham and Clifton (1966). A more recent review of the data and theories in this area was written by Graham (1973). in response to a wide range of novel environmental stimuli. It also occurs in a wide variety of lower animals as well as in infant and adult human beings.

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  Understanding Animal Behaviour

  • Rory Putman(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Whittles Publishing

    (Publisher)

  21 4 Receiving stimuli and analysing the incoming information W e have progressed some way, but we have been focusing on the response. We still have not really examined what we mean by these ‘stimuli’ from an animal’s environment which control that response, have not examined the inputs to the system. In this chapter we will explore what different animals may be able to sense of the world around them, and how that perception actually controls the behavioural responses we may observe. The stimulus configuration The first thing we should note is that stimuli from an animal’s environment may affect the performance of behaviour in a number of different ways: they can act to trigger the performance of a behaviour or they can alter that performance once the response has already been initiated, perhaps affecting its intensity or the ‘target’ to which it is addressed. Frequently, many of these different effects are under the control of one and the same stimulus – that is to say that the same stimulus that ‘prompts’ the performance of the behaviour in the first place may also control its intensity and direction. Equally frequently, however, different stimuli affect different aspects of the performance of a behaviour. Indeed, Robert Hinde recognised two distinct and different categories of stimuli in the environment, noting that some cues were impermanent, present only occasionally or fleetingly in an animal’s surroundings, while others were ever-present. He argued that the first type, impermanent cues, were much more likely to be important as triggers for initiating particular behaviours, while stimuli which are permanent features of the environment, simply because they are ever-present, are less likely to be used as triggers and their more 22 Understanding Animal Behaviour usual role may be in channelling and directing a behaviour once initiated.

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  Feeling, Thinking, and Talking

  How the Embodied Brain Shapes Everyday Communication

  • L. David Ritchie(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  9 Because Damasio explicitly incorporates signaling both within the organism and externally, I will use his term. Perception, behavioral response, and the signaling that connects perception and behavioral response are driven by the need to maintain homeostasis, a dynamic balance of chemical and physical conditions optimal for sustained life and future reproductive success. Communicative signaling within and between organisms is driven by the same needs, fundamental to all organisms. This signaling within humans (and other animals) includes both the electrochemical signaling associated with neural systems and the chemical signals emitted by many bodily tissues and organs, as well as by the bacteria, viruses, and other independent organisms that inhabit our digestive tract, tissues, and organs. These signals operate with varying degrees of specificity in complex ways that biologists are barely beginning to understand. Homeostasis at every level is “forward-projecting.” Long-term survival and reproductive success within the organism’s ecological environment requires projecting past experiences and present perceptions as a basis for future 7 At times of scarcity or other heightened risk, the bar may be raised: What constitutes a “sufficiently good fit” will vary according to the ecological conditions that, in most ecosystems, tend to swing in a cycle between abundance and scarcity, good times and hard times. Chance also plays a role; for example, if an otherwise “fit” organism is killed by fire, flood, or accident before reproducing, its genes die with it, no matter how “fit” they were. 8 Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher (2010, p. 48); see also Maturana and Varela (1980); Varela, Thompson, and Rosch (1991/2016). 9 Damasio (2018). Homeostasis 21 actions. 10 Reproductive units that are “forward-looking” in this sense are more likely to reproduce; more precisely, genes that code for “forward-looking” behavior are more likely to reproduce and spread.

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