Abstract:
Exposure of wildlife to anthropogenic noise is associated with disruptive effects. Research on this topic has focused on behavioural and physiological responses of animals to noise, with little work investigating links to cognitive function. Neurological processes that maintain cognitive performance can be impacted by stress and sleep disturbances. While sleep loss impairs cognitive performance in Australian magpies, it is unclear whether urban noise, which disrupts sleep, can impact cognition as well. To fill this gap, we explored how environmentally relevant urban noise affected the performance of wild-caught, city-living Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen tyrannica) on a cognitive task battery including associative and reversal learning, inhibitory control, and spatial memory. Birds were housed and tested in a laboratory environment; sample sizes varied across tasks (n=7-9 birds). Tests were conducted over 4 weeks, during which all magpies were exposed to both an urban noise playback and a quiet control. Birds were presented with the entire test battery twice: following exposure to, and in the absence of, an anthropogenic noise playback; however, tests were always performed without noise (playback muted during testing). Magpies performed similarly in both treatments on all four tasks. We also found that prior experience with the associative learning task had a strong effect on performance, with birds performing better on their second round of trials. Like previous findings on Australian magpies tested on the same tasks in the wild under noisy conditions, we could not find any disruptive effects on cognitive performance in a controlled experimental laboratory setting.
摘要:
野生动物暴露于人为噪声与破坏性影响有关。对这一主题的研究集中在动物对噪声的行为和生理反应,研究与认知功能的联系的工作很少。维持认知表现的神经过程可能会受到压力和睡眠障碍的影响。虽然睡眠不足会损害澳大利亚喜pies的认知表现,目前还不清楚城市噪音,扰乱睡眠,也会影响认知。为了填补这个空白,我们探索了与环境相关的城市噪声如何影响野生捕获的性能,城市生活的澳大利亚喜pies(Gymnorhinatibicentyrannica)在认知任务电池上,包括联想和反转学习,抑制控制,和空间记忆。鸟类在实验室环境中饲养和测试;样本大小因任务而异(n=7-9只鸟类)。测试进行了四个星期,在此期间,所有喜pies都暴露在城市噪音回放和安静的控制之下。向鸟类展示了整个测试电池两次:暴露于,在没有的情况下,人为噪声回放;然而,测试总是在没有噪声的情况下进行(在测试期间播放静音)。喜pies在所有四个任务的两种治疗中表现相似。我们还发现,联想学习任务的先前经验对绩效有很大影响,鸟类在第二轮试验中表现更好。就像以前对澳大利亚喜pies在嘈杂条件下在野外进行相同任务测试的发现一样,在受控的实验实验室环境中,我们没有发现对认知表现的任何破坏性影响.