Preference for and discrimination of paintings by mice

PLoS One. 2013 Jun 6;8(6):e65335. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065335. Print 2013.

Abstract

I measured preference for paintings (Renoir vs. Picasso or Kandinsky vs. Mondrian) in mice. In general mice did not display a painting preference except for two mice: one preferred Renoir to Picasso, and the other preferred Kandinsky to Mondrian. Thereafter, I examined discrimination of paintings with new mice. When exposure to paintings of one artist was associated with an injection of morphine (3.0 mg/kg), mice displayed conditioned preference for those paintings, showing discrimination of paintings by Renoir from those by Picasso, and paintings by Kandinsky from those by Mondrian after the conditioning. They also exhibited generalization of the preference to novel paintings of the artists. After conditioning with morphine for a set of paintings consisting of two artists, mice showed discrimination between two sets of paintings also from the two artists but not in association with morphine. These results suggest that mice can discriminate not only between an artist's style but also among paintings of the same artist. When mice were trained to discriminate a pair of paintings by Kandinsky and Renoir in an operant chamber equipped with a touch screen, they showed transfer of the discrimination to new pairs of the artists, but did not show transfer of discrimination of paintings by other artists, suggesting generalization.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Behavior, Animal*
  • Conditioning, Operant / drug effects
  • Discrimination, Psychological / drug effects
  • Generalization, Psychological / drug effects
  • Injections
  • Male
  • Mice / psychology*
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Morphine / pharmacology
  • Narcotics / pharmacology
  • Paintings / psychology*
  • Visual Perception / drug effects
  • Visual Perception / physiology*

Substances

  • Narcotics
  • Morphine

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Global COE Program (D-19) by JSPS (Japan). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.