IISc In Bengaluru Found New Ways To Teach Monkeys
Update: 2022-02-17 12:10 IST
IISc In Bengaluru Found New Ways To Teach Monkeys
A group of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has devised a revolutionary method of training and analysing them. This is not the for the first time, Macaque monkeys are frequently used in cognitive research.
The scientists explained that Macaque monkeys are commonly used in cognitive studies because they are highly intelligent social creatures with many similarities to humans. The monkeys are generally brought into highly specialised labs and restrained to acquire brain recordings and track eye motions while performing complex cognitive tasks.
SP Arun, associate professor, Centre for Neuroscience stated that the conventional technique hinders researching vision in more realistic contexts, as well as natural and social behaviours. As a result, they decided to reverse the situation by introducing a specialised lab inside the monkey's home.
Monkeys can walk freely in their new lab, which includes a huge natural space with trees and a play area, as well as a touchscreen workstation where they can be educated to complete sophisticated tasks. This is intended to create a one-of-a-kind setting in which scientists may investigate novel social interactions while the monkeys learn, which is now impossible to do using traditional approaches.
As per IISc, the arrangement includes a naturalistic group habitation chamber and a behaviour room whereby monkeys might undertake activities on a touchscreen workstation. It further added that they were instructed to freely place their heads on a chinrest to learn and accomplish complex cognitive tasks as part of the study.
Arun and his team not only built a lovely animal-friendly naturalistic facility, but they also overcame some substantial technical obstacles. First, they needed to create a touchscreen workstation where monkeys could do complex tasks in exchange for a reward of juice. The second difficulty was obtaining a precise sight. They noticed that when monkeys drink juice, they always put their heads in the same position. To help them stabilise their heads, they created modular head/chin supports. This, in combination with our bespoke eye tracker setup, provided us with excellent gaze signals.
He explained that they trained the monkeys to do a same-different task deciding whether two things are the same or not to have a better understanding of what was possible. Despite the fact that monkeys are essentially unfettered and freely engaging with the touchscreen or moving away at their own will. They trained monkeys to complete such a task and acquired remarkable gaze tracking.
The scientists chose to see if untrained monkeys could learn from those who had been trained, according to Arun.
Researchers let an untrained monkey (M2) into the behaviour patterns room with trained monkeys (M1 & M3) as proof of innovative intriguing behaviours that could be witnessed in this training center. Researchers thought they could use their arrangement to let naive animals notice trained monkeys doing the task and see if they might learn it on their behalf.