Summary
The green crab, Carduus maenas, can be trained in a classical (Pavlovian) conditioning procedure. By pairing vibration on the carapace as a conditioned stimulus (CS) with air-puff to one of the eyes as an unconditioned stimulus (US), it is possible to teach the animals to retract the eye during CS presentations. Controls subjected to unpaired stimuli show lower rates of responding. Crabs can also be trained in a signalled avoidance procedure, but the similarity of acquisition curves to those for classical conditioning suggests that the mechanism may be Pavlovian. Electromyograms recorded from the eye muscles can be used to follow conditioning and show that animals can be conditioned with the eye restrained.
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© 1990 Springer Basel AG
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Feinman, R.D., Abramson, C.I., Forman, R.R. (1990). Classical Conditioning in the Crab. In: Wiese, K., Krenz, WD., Tautz, J., Reichert, H., Mulloney, B. (eds) Frontiers in Crustacean Neurobiology. Advances in Life Sciences. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-5689-8_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-5689-8_25
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Basel
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