抄録
Macaque monkeys are able to discriminate between food and non-food, or male and female monkeys, by using visual information. It is known that visual preference is modified by endogenous or exogenous factors. In this study we have examined the effects of several environmental factors on visually-guided category discrimination tasks in two female rhesus monkeys, (macaca mulatta). Each trial of the task was started with a visual presentation of one of the following pictures. In food/non-food discrimination task, a picture of either food or non-food object was presented. In male/female task, a picture from one of the sexes of Japanese monkeys was presented. Pre-determined target, for example category of male, was assigned on a lever, and the monkey has to press the lever when the "target" category, male in this case, was presented on a screen to get water reword. Tasks were composed of blocked-fashion, and in each block, a monkey had to discriminate the category of a presented picture. We examined the effects of the plant-derived odor on this task. We used green odors, which were cis-3-hexenol and trans-2-hexenal extracted from green leaves. Aditionally oak lactone and jasmine lactone, which are major ingredient of wiskey and oolong, were used. As a result, green odors and oak lactone negatively affected the performance of food/non-food task, in particular trans-2-hexenal reduced the score during exposure and extended latency of the onset of bar press . By contrast, The latency for male/female task was reduced by exposure of plant-derived odor. [Jpn J Physiol 54 Suppl:S210 (2004)]
