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Kalin, N. H., & Shelton, S. E. (2003). Nonhuman primate models to study anxiety, emotion regulation, and psychopathology. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1008, 189–200.
Abstract: This paper demonstrates that the rhesus monkey provides an excellent model to study mechanisms underlying human anxiety and fear and emotion regulation. In previous studies with rhesus monkeys, stable, brain, endocrine, and behavioral characteristics related to individual differences in anxiety were found. It was suggested that, when extreme, these features characterize an anxious endophenotype and that these findings in the monkey are particularly relevant to understanding adaptive and maladaptive anxiety responses in humans. The monkey model is also relevant to understanding the development of human psychopathology. For example, children with extremely inhibited temperament are at increased risk to develop anxiety disorders, and these children have behavioral and biological alterations that are similar to those described in the monkey anxious endophenotype. It is likely that different aspects of the anxious endophenotype are mediated by the interactions of limbic, brain stem, and cortical regions. To understand the brain mechanisms underlying adaptive anxiety responses and their physiological concomitants, a series of studies in monkeys lesioning components of the neural circuitry (amygdala, central nucleus of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex) hypothesized to play a role are currently being performed. Initial findings suggest that the central nucleus of the amygdala modulates the expression of behavioral inhibition, a key feature of the endophenotype. In preliminary FDG positron emission tomography (PET) studies, functional linkages were established between the amygdala and prefrontal cortical regions that are associated with the activation of anxiety.
Keywords: Affect/*physiology; Amygdala/blood supply; Animals; Anxiety/genetics/*psychology; Brain/*blood supply; Brain Stem/blood supply; Carrier Proteins/genetics; Electroencephalography; *Inhibition (Psychology); Macaca mulatta; Membrane Glycoproteins/genetics; *Membrane Transport Proteins; *Nerve Tissue Proteins; Prefrontal Cortex/blood supply; Serotonin Plasma Membrane Transport Proteins; Social Environment; Temperament; Tomography, Emission-Computed
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Plotnik, J., Nelson, P. A., & de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Visual field information in the face perception of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1000, 94–98.
Abstract: Evidence for a visual field advantage (VFA) in the face perception of chimpanzees was investigated using a modification of a free-vision task. Four of six chimpanzee subjects previously trained on a computer joystick match-to-sample paradigm were able to distinguish between images of neutral face chimeras consisting of two left sides (LL) or right sides (RR) of the face. While an individual's ability to make this distinction would be unlikely to determine their suitability for the VFA tests, it was important to establish that distinctive information was available in test images. Data were then recorded on their choice of the LL vs. RR chimera as a match to the true, neutral image; a bias for one of these options would indicate an hemispatial visual field advantage. Results suggest that chimpanzees, unlike humans, do not exhibit a left visual field advantage. These results have important implications for studies on laterality and asymmetry in facial signals and their perception in primates.
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de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Animal communication: panel discussion. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1000, 79–87. |
de Waal, F. B. M. (2003). Darwin's legacy and the study of primate visual communication. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1000, 7–31.
Abstract: After Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, we had to wait 60 years before the theme of animal expressions was picked up by another astute observer. In 1935, Nadezhda Ladygina-Kohts published a detailed comparison of the expressive behavior of a juvenile chimpanzee and of her own child. After Kohts, we had to wait until the 1960s for modern ethological analyses of primate facial and gestural communication. Again, the focus was on the chimpanzee, but ethograms on other primates appeared as well. Our understanding of the range of expressions in other primates is at present far more advanced than that in Darwin's time. A strong social component has been added: instead of focusing on the expressions per se, they are now often classified according to the social situations in which they typically occur. Initially, quantitative analyses were sequential (i.e., concerned with temporal associations between behavior patterns), and they avoided the language of emotions. I will discuss some of this early work, including my own on the communicative repertoire of the bonobo, a close relative of the chimpanzee (and ourselves). I will provide concrete examples to make the point that there is a much richer matrix of contexts possible than the common behavioral categories of aggression, sex, fear, play, and so on. Primate signaling is a form of negotiation, and previous classifications have ignored the specifics of what animals try to achieve with their exchanges. There is also increasing evidence for signal conventionalization in primates, especially the apes, in both captivity and the field. This process results in group-specific or “cultural” communication patterns.
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Seyfarth, R. M., & Cheney, D. L. (2003). Meaning and emotion in animal vocalizations. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 1000, 32–55.
Abstract: Historically, a dichotomy has been drawn between the semantic communication of human language and the apparently emotional calls of animals. Current research paints a more complicated picture. Just as scientists have identified elements of human speech that reflect a speaker's emotions, field experiments have shown that the calls of many animals provide listeners with information about objects and events in the environment. Like human speech, therefore, animal vocalizations simultaneously provide others with information that is both semantic and emotional. In support of this conclusion, we review the results of field experiments on the natural vocalizations of African vervet monkeys, diana monkeys, baboons, and suricates (a South African mongoose). Vervet and diana monkeys give acoustically distinct alarm calls in response to the presence of leopards, eagles, and snakes. Each alarm call type elicits a different, adaptive response from others nearby. Field experiments demonstrate that listeners compare these vocalizations not just according to their acoustic properties but also according to the information they convey. Like monkeys, suricates give acoustically distinct alarm calls in response to different predators. Within each predator class, the calls also differ acoustically according to the signaler's perception of urgency. Like speech, therefore, suricate alarm calls convey both semantic and emotional information. The vocalizations of baboons, like those of many birds and mammals, are individually distinctive. As a result, when one baboon hears a sequence of calls exchanged between two or more individuals, the listener acquires information about social events in its group. Baboons, moreover, are skilled “eavesdroppers:” their response to different call sequences provides evidence of the sophisticated information they acquire from other individuals' vocalizations. Baboon males give loud “wahoo” calls during competitive displays. Like other vocalizations, these highly emotional calls provide listeners with information about the caller's dominance rank, age, and competitive ability. Although animal vocalizations, like human speech, simultaneously encode both semantic and emotional information, they differ from language in at least one fundamental respect. Although listeners acquire rich information from a caller's vocalization, callers do not, in the human sense, intend to provide it. Listeners acquire information as an inadvertent consequence of signaler behavior.
Keywords: Acoustics; *Affect; Animals; Behavior, Animal; *Intention; Posture; Sound Spectrography; *Vocalization, Animal
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Steinhoff, H. J., Lieutenant, K., & Redhardt, A. (1989). Conformational transition of aquomethemoglobin: intramolecular histidine E7 binding reaction to the heme iron in the temperature range between 220 K and 295 K as seen by EPR and temperature-jump measurements. Biochim Biophys Acta, 996(1-2), 49–56.
Abstract: Temperature-dependent EPR and temperature-jump measurements have been carried out, in order to examine the high-spin to low-spin transition of aquomethemogobin (pH 6.0). Relaxation rates and equilibrium constants could be determined as a function of temperature. As a reaction mechanism for the high-spin to low-spin transition, the binding of N epsilon of His E7 to the heme iron had been proposed; the same mechanism had been suggested for the ms-effect, found in temperature-jump experiments on aquomethemoglobin. A comparison of the thermodynamic quantities, deduced form the measurements in this paper, gives evidence that indeed the same reaction is investigated in both cases. Our results and most of the findings of earlier studies on the spin-state transitions of aquomethemoglobin, using susceptibility, optical, or EPR measurements, can be explained by the transition of methemoglobin with H2O as ligand (with high-spin state at all temperatures) and methemoglobin with ligand N epsilon of His E7 (with a low-spin ground state). Thermal fluctuations of large amplitude have to be postulated for the reaction to take place, so this reaction may be understood as a probe for the study of protein dynamics.
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Parish, A. R., & De Waal, F. B. (2000). The other “closest living relative”. How bonobos (Pan paniscus) challenge traditional assumptions about females, dominance, intra- and intersexual interactions, and hominid evolution. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 907, 97–113.
Abstract: Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) societies are typically characterized as physically aggressive, male-bonded and male-dominated. Their close relatives, the bonobos (Pan paniscus), differ in startling and significant ways. For instance, female bonobos bond with one another, form coalitions, and dominate males. A pattern of reluctance to consider, let alone acknowledge, female dominance in bonobos exists, however. Because both species are equally “man's” closest relative, the bonobo social system complicates models of human evolution that have historically been based upon referents that are male and chimpanzee-like. The bonobo evidence suggests that models of human evolution must be reformulated such that they also accommodate: real and meaningful female bonds; the possibility of systematic female dominance over males; female mating strategies which encompass extra-group paternities; hunting and meat distribution by females; the importance of the sharing of plant foods; affinitive inter-community interactions; males that do not stalk and attack and are not territorial; and flexible social relationships in which philopatry does not necessarily predict bonding pattern.
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Gallup, G. G. J. (1997). On the rise and fall of self-conception in primates. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 818, 72–82. |
Swartz, K. B. (1997). What is mirror self-recognition in nonhuman primates, and what is it not? Ann N Y Acad Sci, 818, 64–71. |
de Wall, F. B., & Aureli, F. (1997). Conflict resolution and distress alleviation in monkeys and apes. Ann N Y Acad Sci, 807, 317–328.
Abstract: Research on nonhuman primates has produced compelling evidence for reconciliation and consolation, that is, postconflict contacts that serve to respectively repair social relationships and reassure distressed individuals, such as victims of attack. This has led to a view of conflict and conflict resolution as an integrated part of social relationships, hence determined by social factors and modifiable by the social environment. Implications of this new model of social conflict are discussed along with evidence for behavioral flexibility, the value of cooperation, and the possibility that distress alleviation rests on empathy, a capacity that may be present in chimpanzees and humans but not in most other animals.
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