ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2021
Specialized spatial cognition is associated with reduced cognitive senescence in a food-caching bird.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Novel object recognition in the dorsomedial and ventral hippocampus of young domestic chicks (Gallus gallus).Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Living on the edge: the evolution of spatial cognition in food-caching chickadees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Individual variation in spatial reference memory influences cache site choice in a wild bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- General cognitive performance declines with female age and is negatively related to fledging success in a wild bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Natural variation in developmental condition has limited effect on spatial cognition in a wild food-caching bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Specialized spatial cognition is associated with reduced cognitive senescence in a food-caching bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
Senescence, the gradual reduction and loss of function as organisms age, is a widespread process that is especially pronounced in cognitive abilities. Senescence appears to have a genetic basis and can be affected by evolutionary processes. If cognitive senescence is shaped by natural selection, it may be linked with selection on cognitive abilities needed for survival and reproduction, such that species where fitness is directly related to cognitive abilities should evolve delayed cognitive senescence likely resulting in higher lifetime fitness. We used wild food-caching mountain chickadees, which rely on specialized spatial cognition to recover thousands of food caches annually, to test for cognitive senescence in spatial learning and memory and reversal spatial learning and memory abilities. We detected no signs of age-related senescence in spatial cognitive performance on either task in birds ranging from 1 to 6 years old; older birds actually performed better on spatial learning and memory tasks. Our results therefore suggest that cognitive senescence may be either delayed (potentially appearing after 6 years) or negligible in species with strong selection on cognitive abilities and that food-caching species may present a useful model to investigate mechanisms associated with cognitive senescence.
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