Animal Behavior and Cognition

Probing the decision-making mechanisms underlying choice between drug and nondrug rewards in rats

1. Youna Vandaele
2. Magalie Lenoir
3. Caroline Vouillac-Mendoza
4. Karine Guillem
5. Serge H Ahmed

• Curated by eLife

  Summary:

  In this manuscript the authors perform a retrospective analysis in attempt to delineate the role of goal-directed versus habitual mechanisms underlying choice between drug and non-drug rewards. Specifically, the authors utilized data generated in their laboratory to assess cocaine-versus-saccharin choice following limited and extended training paradigms. A sequential choice model was used to assess the prediction that increased latencies during choice reflect goal-directed control; whereas no change in latencies reflects habitual control. Based on this model, the authors report that rats engage in goal-directed control after limited training, and adopt more habitual responding after extended training. The authors conclude that the sequential choice model is specific to habitual choice.

  While the Reviewers appreciate the approach and conceptual framework described in this manuscript, they are all in agreement that additional data and analyses are needed to better support the claims surrounding goal-directed versus habitual control of reward-seeking behavior. For example, an independent evaluation of whether the target behavior is in fact goal-directed or habitual seems necessary to support such claims. Reviewers’ comments and suggestions for improvement are included below.

  Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 opted to reveal their name to the authors in the decision letter after review.

Reviewed by eLife

A naturalistic environment to study visual cognition in unrestrained monkeys

1. Georgin Jacob
2. Harish Katti
3. Thomas Cherian
4. Jhilik Das
5. KA Zhivago
6. SP Arun

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: This manuscript describes a new experimental environment for training macaque monkeys to perform behavioral tasks. Using this facility, the authors trained freely moving macaques to perform a visual "same-different" task using operant conditioning, and under voluntary head restraint. The authors demonstrate that they could obtain reliable eye-tracking data and high-performance accuracy from macaques in this facility. They also noted that subordinate macaques can learn to perform basic aspects of the task by observing their dominant conspecifics perform the task in this facility. The authors conclude that this naturalistic environment can facilitate the study of brain activity during natural and controlled behavioral tasks.

  The manuscript is broadly organized along three distinct lines of inquiry. First, the authors describe a customized living space for a small group of macaque monkeys. Second, the authors train two of these monkeys to perform a cognitive task in a purpose-built room of the living enclosure. Third, the authors describe their experience training a third monkey to complete the cognitive task.

Reviewed by eLife

Simulated poaching affects global connectivity and efficiency in social networks of African savanna elephants—An exemplar of how human disturbance impacts group-living species

1. Maggie Wiśniewska
2. Ivan Puga-Gonzalez
3. Phyllis Lee
4. Cynthia Moss
5. Gareth Russell
6. Simon Garnier
7. Cédric Sueur

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: Your study used simulated elephant poaching to investigate the impact of selective individual removal on the functional resilience of animal social networks to human-induced disturbance. This topic is interesting and timely, because understanding how threatened animal populations are impacted by humans is of critical importance and requires more study -- especially for species/processes with limited real-world data, but with a potentially strong impact on ecosystem functioning. However, the reviewers unanimously agreed that the logic and assumptions underlying the study are problematic and, thus, limit the insights that can be drawn from the simulation results. They highlighted specifically that the network metrics used to infer functionality are not supported by field data on elephants, or indeed any other study systems. Please find more detailed comments from all three reviewers appended below.

Reviewed by eLife

Detecting fine and elaborate movements with piezo sensors, from heartbeat to the temporal organization of behavior

1. Maria Isabel Carreño-Muñoz
2. Maria Carmen Medrano
3. Thomas Leinekugel
4. Maelys Bompart
5. Fabienne Martins
6. Enejda Subashi
7. Franck Aby
8. Andreas Frick
9. Marc Landry
10. Manuel Grana
11. Xavier Leinekugel

• Curated by eLife

  Summary: The need to easily measure spontaneous behaviors in a robust fashion in experimental animals is an important problem in behavioral neuroscience. Thus, while this study is timely, the reviewers found fundamental flaws that substantially dampen enthusiasm for this work. The collective major concerns are: 1) the advance provided by this system, relative to already existing and commercially available software based on similar principles, was not clear, 2) critical technical details describing this system are missing 3) the diverse biological applications were not explored with sufficient depth and many of the related claims had potential alternative explanations.

Reviewed by eLife

Analysis of ultrasonic vocalizations from mice using computer vision and machine learning

1. Antonio HO Fonseca
2. Gustavo M Santana
3. Gabriela M Bosque Ortiz
4. Sérgio Bampi
5. Marcelo O Dietrich

Reviewed by eLife

Independent mechanisms of temporal and linguistic cue correspondence benefiting audiovisual speech processing

1. Sara Fiscella
2. Madeline S Cappelloni
3. Ross K Maddox

Reviewed by eLife

Replay as structural inference in the hippocampal-entorhinal system

1. Talfan Evans
2. Neil Burgess

Reviewed by eLife

A decentralised neural model explaining optimal integration of navigational strategies in insects

1. Xuelong Sun
2. Shigang Yue
3. Michael Mangan

Reviewed by eLife

Reversal learning of visual cues in Heliconiini butterflies

1. Fletcher J. Young
2. Lina Melo-Flórez
3. W. Owen McMillan
4. Stephen H. Montgomery

Reviewed by PREreview

The use of pigs vocalisation structure to assess the quality of human-pig relationship

1. Avelyne S Villain
2. Carole Guérin
3. Céline Tallet

Reviewed by Peer Community in Animal Science