Three Second Memory Essay

A Three Second Memory? There is a common belief that fish only have a three second memory and that they cannot be trained to compete tricks, and this may be caused by the short lifespan of some species of fish, making testing for long term memory difficult (Reebs, 2008, p.1). Moreover, many assume that goldfish do not have a memory since goldfish always seem like they are hungry, since they are always seen foraging for food.
However, as a long time goldfish owner, I have witnessed my goldfish swimming to the top of the tank whenever I approached their tank or when they heard the creak of the hood of the fish tank as I opened it to feed them. This happened because of associative learning, where the goldfish associated the creaking sound of …show more content…
325). Researchers believe that humans have a more advanced cognitive ability because of a “six-layered neocortex” (Brown, 2011, p. 325). Fish were believed to have a small paleocortex in their forebrain, therefore, structures such as the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, the cerebral cortex, responsible for processing information, and the amygdala, which is responsible for conditioned learning would not be present in the telencephalon (Hines, 2016 April). However, recent studies have shown that the brain structures for fish are as equally as complex as those of “higher” vertebrate groups, with the only difference lying in the development of the telencephalon. In ray-finned fish, also known as telosts, the telencephalon is divided into “two massive hemispheres” and research has shown that divisions in the telencephalon have similar functions parts of the telencephalon in humans, such as the hippocampus and the amygdala (Brown, 2011,