0000000000553873
AUTHOR
Donald A. Wilson
showing 4 related works from this author
Cross-species configural perception of binary odor mixtures
2018
International audience
Neonatal representation of odour objects: distinct memories of the whole and its parts
2014
Extraction of relevant information from highly complex environments is a prerequisite to survival. Within odour mixtures, such information is contained in the odours of specific elements or in the mixture configuration perceived as a whole unique odour. For instance, an AB mixture of the element A (ethyl isobutyrate) and the element B (ethyl maltol) generates a configural AB percept in humans and apparently in another species, the rabbit. Here, we examined whether the memory of such a configuration is distinct from the memory of the individual odorants. Taking advantage of the newborn rabbit's ability to learn odour mixtures, we combined behavioural and pharmacological tools to specifically…
Differential memory persistence of odor mixture and components in newborn rabbits: competition between the whole and its parts
2014
Interacting with the mother during the daily nursing, newborn rabbits experience her body odour cues. In particular, the mammary pheromone (MP) contained in rabbit milk triggers the typical behaviour which helps to localize and seize the nipples. It also promotes the very rapid appetitive learning of simple or complex stimuli (odorants or mixtures) through associative conditioning. We previously showed that 24h after MP-induced conditioning to odorants A (ethyl isobutyrate) or B (ethyl maltol), newborn rabbits perceive the AB mixture in a weak configural way, i.e. they perceive the odour of the AB configuration in addition to the odours of the elements. Moreover, after conditioning to the m…
Evidence of neonatal memory of odor configuration
2013
The perception of some mixtures of odorants engages configural abilities, i.e. the perception of these mixtures as single odor objects. For instance, data in human adults demonstrated that a mixture of two odorants (AB), one smelling like strawberry and the other like caramel, generates the configural perception of the odor of pineapple (Le Berre et al., 2008; Barkat et al., 2012). Configural processing may be adaptive also for young organisms, to which rapid extraction of chemical information from the maternal environment, highly complex, is a prerequisite to survival. Thus, results in newborn rabbits suggest the perception of a unique odor in the AB mixture (smelling like configural pinea…