Learning to Eat

In Chapter 2 we dealt with a more or less neutral stimulus: touching a wall. We now compare the two principles with a stimulus and response essential for life: hunger and eating. For the sake of visualizing, we again use the push-me-pull-you’s. It is assumed that both types of primordial push-me-pull-you’s somehow lived through their experiences with the walls and now have developed a mouth, a stomach, and a receptor that signals hunger, S_h (see Fig. 3.1). They have two responses they can make with food: spitting it out, R _out, or swallowing it, R _in. The hunger receptor is innately connected to both responses, with the initial strengths of the two connections, S_h–R _out and S_h–R _in,. being equal. The animal then has to learn to make the appropriate response.