Hippocampal neural activity similar to mammals exists in storage songbirds｜Science Weekly Selection

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According to the researcher's report, the tufted tit can use a mammalian-like neural mechanism to process spatial memory
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The tufted tit is a small songbird with a strong memory
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Storage animals like tufted tits have excellent memories, they can accurately remember the location of thousands of hidden food places in the environment
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Therefore, they are often regarded as models of spatial memory and idols of higher cognition among animals in textbooks
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Although vertebrates with spatial memory are very common, the anatomical structure of the hippocampal brain regions related to this memory differs among vertebrates of different branches
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Therefore, it is generally believed that the memory neural mechanism used by non-mammalians is very different from that used by mammals
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Hannah Payne and colleagues used electrophysiological recordings of free-moving birds to analyze neuronal activity in the hippocampal homologous organs of tufted tits and zebra finches; these two birds have or do not have feeding behavior, respectively
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Payne et al.
discovered mammalian-like neural activity in the hippocampus of the tufted tit, including sharp wave ripples and ordered spatial recognition cells in anatomical structures
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However, compared with tufted tits, non-storage zebra finch hippocampus has weaker and less space-related neural activities
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These findings suggest that the basic neural mechanisms of spatial memory in birds and mammals are similar, and they are conserved in a variety of very different hippocampal brain circuits
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