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Fagot, J., Wasserman, E. A., & Young, M. E. (2001). Discriminating the relation between relations: the role of entropy in abstract conceptualization by baboons (Papio papio) and humans (Homo sapiens). J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 27(4), 316–328.
Abstract: Two baboons (Papio papio) successfully learned relational matching-to-sample: They picked the choice display that involved the same relation among 16 pictures (same or different) as the sample display, although the sample display shared no pictures with the choice displays. The baboons generalized relational matching behavior to sample displays created from novel pictures. Further experiments varying the number of sample pictures and the mixture of same and different sample pictures suggested that entropy plays a key role in the baboons' conceptual behavior. Two humans (Homo sapiens) were similarly trained and tested; their behavior was both similar to and different from the baboons' behavior. The results suggest that animals other than humans and chimpanzees can discriminate the relation between relations. They further suggest that entropy detection may underlie same-different conceptualization, but that additional processes may participate in human conceptualization.
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Branchi, I., Bichler, Z., Berger-Sweeney, J., & Ricceri, L. (2003). Animal models of mental retardation: from gene to cognitive function. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 27(1-2), 141–153.
Abstract: About 2-3% of all children are affected by mental retardation, and genetic conditions rank among the leading causes of mental retardation. Alterations in the information encoded by genes that regulate critical steps of brain development can disrupt the normal course of development, and have profound consequences on mental processes. Genetically modified mouse models have helped to elucidate the contribution of specific gene alterations and gene-environment interactions to the phenotype of several forms of mental retardation. Mouse models of several neurodevelopmental pathologies, such as Down and Rett syndromes and X-linked forms of mental retardation, have been developed. Because behavior is the ultimate output of brain, behavioral phenotyping of these models provides functional information that may not be detectable using molecular, cellular or histological evaluations. In particular, the study of ontogeny of behavior is recommended in mouse models of disorders having a developmental onset. Identifying the role of specific genes in neuropathologies provides a framework in which to understand key stages of human brain development, and provides a target for potential therapeutic intervention.
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Candura, S. M., Verni, P., Minelli, C. M., Rosso, G. L., Cappelli, M. I., Strambi, S., et al. (2006). [Occupational risks among public safety and security forces]. G Ital Med Lav Ergon, 28(1), 53–62.
Abstract: The present paper tries to identify the occupational risk factors (physical, chemical, biological, psychological), variable depending on jobs and tasks, to which the heterogeneous public safety/security workers are exposed. The fight against criminality and public order maintenance imply (sometimes fatal) traumatic risks, and expose to psychophysical and sensorial tiring, unfavourable macro- and microclimatic conditions, the risk of baropathy (air navigation, underwater activities), noise (generated by firearms and several other sources), vibrations and shakings (automatic weapons, transport vehicles), the risk of electric injury, ionizing (X and gamma rays) and non-inonizing (ultraviolet rays, microwaves and radiofrequencies, electromagnetic fields) radiations. Chemical hazards include carbon monoxide and other combustion products (fires, urban traffic), substances released in chemical accidents, tear gases, lead (firing grounds, metal works, environmental pollution), solvents, lubrificants and cutting oils (mechanic repair and maintenance), laboratory materials and reagents, irritant and/or sensitizing agents contained in gloves. The main biological risks are tetanus, blood-borne diseases (viral hepatitis, AIDS), aerogenous diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, Legionnaire's disease, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis), dog- or horse-transmitted zoonosis. Finally, emotional, psychosomatic and behavioural stress-related disorders (e.g., burn-out syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder) are typically frequent. The presence of numerous and diversified hazards among public safety/security forces imposes the adoption of occupational medicine measures, including risk assessment, health education, technical and environmental prevention, personal protective devices, sanitary surveillance and biological monitoring, clinical interventions (diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation of occupational accidents and illnesses), prompt medico-legal evaluation of occupational-related compensation claims.
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[No authors listed]. (1979). International Conference on Environmental Cadmium: an overview. In Environmental Health Perspectives (Vol. 28, pp. 297–30).
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Manns, J. R., Clark, R. E., & Squire, L. R. (2002). Standard delay eyeblink classical conditioning is independent of awareness. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 28(1), 32–37.
Abstract: P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks (2002) suggested that all forms of classical conditioning depend on awareness of the stimulus contingencies. This article considers the available data for eyeblink classical conditioning, including data from 2 studies (R. E. Clark, J. R. Manns, & L. R. Squire, 2001; J. R. Manns, R. E. Clark, & L. R. Squire, 2001) that were completed too recently to have been considered in their review. In addition, in response to questions raised by P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks, 2 new analyses of data are presented from studies published previously. The available data from humans and experimental animals provide strong evidence that delay eyeblink classical conditioning (but not trace eyeblink classical conditioning) can be acquired and retained independently of the forebrain and independently of awareness. This conclusion applies to standard conditioning paradigms; for example, to single-cue delay conditioning when a tone is used as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and to differential delay conditioning when the positive and negative conditioned stimuli (CS+ and CS-) are a tone and white noise.
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Pickens, C. L., & Holland, P. C. (2004). Conditioning and cognition. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 28(7), 651–661.
Abstract: Animals' abilities to use internal representations of absent objects to guide adaptive behavior and acquire new information, and to represent multiple spatial, temporal, and object properties of complex events and event sequences, may underlie many aspects of human perception, memory, and symbolic thought. In this review, two classes of simple associative learning tasks that address these core cognitive capacities are discussed. The first set, including reinforcer revaluation and mediated learning procedures, address the power of Pavlovian conditioned stimuli to gain access, through learning, to representations of upcoming events. The second set of investigations concern the construction of complex stimulus representations, as illustrated in studies of contextual learning, the conjunction of explicit stimulus elements in configural learning procedures, and recent studies of episodic-like memory. The importance of identifying both cognitive process and brain system bases of performance in animal models is emphasized.
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Sarter, M. (2004). Animal cognition: defining the issues. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 28(7), 645–650.
Abstract: The assessment of cognitive functions in rodents represents a critical experimental variable in many research fields, ranging from the basic cognitive neurosciences to psychopharmacology and neurotoxicology. The increasing use of animal behavioral tests as 'assays' for the assessment of effects on learning and memory has resulted in a considerable heterogeneity of data, particularly in the field of behavioral and psycho pharmacology. The limited predictive validity of changes in behavioral performance observed in standard animal tests of learning and memory indicates that a renewed effort to scrutinize the validity of these tests is warranted. In humans, levels of processing (effortful vs. automatic) and categories of information (procedural vs. episodic/declarative) are important variables of cognitive operations. The design of tasks that assess the recall of 'episodic' or 'declarative' information appears to represent a particular challenge for research using laboratory rodents. For example, the hypothesis that changes in inspection time for a previously encountered place or object are based on the recall of declarative/episodic information requires substantiation. In order to generalize findings on the effects of neuronal or pharmacological manipulations on learning and memory, obtained from one species and one task, to other species and other tasks, the mediating role of important sets of variables which influence learning and memory (e.g. attentional, affective) needs to be determined. Similar to the view that a neuronal manipulation (e.g. a lesion) represents a theory of the condition modeled (e.g. a degenerative disorder), an animal behavioral task represents a theory of the behavioral/cognitive process of interest. Therefore, the test of hypotheses regarding the validity of procedures used to assess cognitive functions in animals is an inherent part of the research process.
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Vallortigara, G., & Rogers, L. J. (2005). Survival with an asymmetrical brain: advantages and disadvantages of cerebral lateralization. Behav Brain Sci, 28(4), 575–89; discussion 589–633.
Abstract: Recent evidence in natural and semi-natural settings has revealed a variety of left-right perceptual asymmetries among vertebrates. These include preferential use of the left or right visual hemifield during activities such as searching for food, agonistic responses, or escape from predators in animals as different as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There are obvious disadvantages in showing such directional asymmetries because relevant stimuli may be located to the animal's left or right at random; there is no a priori association between the meaning of a stimulus (e.g., its being a predator or a food item) and its being located to the animal's left or right. Moreover, other organisms (e.g., predators) could exploit the predictability of behavior that arises from population-level lateral biases. It might be argued that lateralization of function enhances cognitive capacity and efficiency of the brain, thus counteracting the ecological disadvantages of lateral biases in behavior. However, such an increase in brain efficiency could be obtained by each individual being lateralized without any need to align the direction of the asymmetry in the majority of the individuals of the population. Here we argue that the alignment of the direction of behavioral asymmetries at the population level arises as an “evolutionarily stable strategy” under “social” pressures occurring when individually asymmetrical organisms must coordinate their behavior with the behavior of other asymmetrical organisms of the same or different species.
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Hemelrijk, C. K., & Wantia, J. (2005). Individual variation by self-organisation. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 29(1), 125–136.
Abstract: In this paper, we show that differences in dominance and spatial centrality of individuals in a group may arise through self-organisation. Our instrument is a model, called DomWorld, that represents two traits that are often found in animals, namely grouping and competing. In this model individual differences grow under the following conditions: (1) when the intensity of aggression increases and grouping becomes denser, (2) when the degree of sexual dimorphism in fighting power increases. In this case the differences among females compared to males grow too, (3) when, upon encountering another individual, the tendency to attack is 'obligate' and not conditional, namely 'sensitive to risks'. Results resemble phenomena described for societies of primates, mice, birds and pigs.
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Krcmar, S., & Maric, S. (2006). Analysis of the feeding sites for some horse flies (Diptera, Tabanidae) on a human in Croatia. Coll Antropol, 30(4), 901–904.
Abstract: The landing patterns of horse flies on the human body were observed in Croatia. A total of 386 horse flies belonging to 22 species were sampled. The five most commonly collected species were used in the analysis. The stochastic linear connection is tight among the landings of the species Tabanus bromius, Tabanus maculicornis, Tabanus tergestinus, and Philipomyia graeca on the human body regions (matrix R). The preferred feeding area for these four species was the lower leg, whereas for the species Haematopota pluvialis it was the head and neck. Of the total number of horse flies that landed 44.81% were on the lower leg. Only 0.26% landed on the forearm. Chi-square analysis indicated non random landing patterns on human by these horse flies.
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