As the aplysia californica, or what is commonly known as the sea hare, has become a greatly valuable laboratory animal since it is used in the study and research of neurobiology of learning and memory, varios researches have been optimizing the use of this animal for their tests. This is because the aplysia californica,or the sea hare, has a very simple nervous system, which is composed of just around a few thousand large and easily identifiable neurons. But regardless of the aplysia californica's very simple nervous system, this animal has the capability of a wide range of non-associative and associative learning tasks. These associative and non-associative learning tasks may include sensitization, habituation, operation and classical conditioning. The following studies conducted on the aplysia californica are those that focus on classical conditioning. This paper presents three studies conducted on the aplysia californica as published in the Journal of Neuroscience in the year 2001.
The first study is a behavioral analysis of classical conditioning of feeding in aplysia presents a conditional stimulus of using tactile stimulation of the lips and an unconditional stimulus of food was used to develop classically conditioned feeding behavior in patients of aplysia californica. Results show that through the use of this developed training protocol that paired training showed a greater increase in the number of bites through tactile stimulation of the lips as compared to the number of bites using unpaired raining through the use of food. Results reinforce that memory was retained for approximately 24 hours in Gihan's Lab. More so, as no evidence was found pertaining to concluding data, reinforcement during classical conditioning of feeding was mediated by afferent pathways that came from the foregut.
The second study on the aplysia californica presents to the research world neurophysiologic correlates of classical conditioning that were identified...