Abstract
Pigeons were operantly conditioned to peck a lighted disc for food. Some were taught a red-green color discrimination, while others were overtrained to peck a white light only. The effect of training on metabolism in 35 subcellular fractions and nine chemical fractions from each brain was measured by uptake of [ 14C]glucosamine and [ 3H]valine injected 30 min prior to the final 30 min training session. Evidence for an effect of training upon uptake into discrete subcellular fractions was negligible. However, training decreased [ 3H]valine incorporation into one protein fraction significantly, and [ 14C]glucosamine incorporation into another fraction marginally. Furthermore, in the fraction which incorporated the greatest amount of [ 14C]glucosamine, naive and discrimination-trained birds took up more label than overtrained birds. These results confirm previous reports of metabolic changes correlated with training in selected protein and glycoprotein fractions from pigeon brain, but fail to localize the changes to specific anatomical sites or subcellular components. These findings support the view that the metabolites involved in the processing of behavioral information are chemically specific but broadly dispersed morphologically.
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