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Bosch, O. J., Nair, H. P., Ahern, T. H., Neumann, I. D., & Young, L. J. (2008). The CRF System Mediates Increased Passive Stress-Coping Behavior Following the Loss of a Bonded Partner in a Monogamous Rodent. Neuropsychopharmacology, 34(6), 1406–1415.
Abstract: Social relationships significantly influence physiology and behavior, including the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal axis, anxiety, and mental
health. Disruption of social bonds through separation or death often results in profound grieving, depression, and physical illness. As the monogamous prairie vole forms enduring, selective pair bonds with the mating partner, they provide an animal model to study the physiological consequences of pair bonding and, thus, the loss of the bonded partner. Male prairie voles were paired with a novel female or male sibling. After 5 days, half of the males of each group were separated from the partner. Elevated plus-maze, forced swim, and tail suspension tests were used to assess anxiety-like and passive stress-coping behaviors indicative of depressive-like behavior. Following 4 days of separation from the female but not the male partner, experimental males displayed increased passive stress-coping. This effect was abolished by long-term intracerebroventricular infusion of a nonselective corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) receptor antagonist without disrupting the bond itself. Both CRF type 1 and 2 receptors were involved in the emergence of passive stress-coping behavior. Furthermore, pairing with a female was associated with elevated CRF mRNA in the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and partner loss elicited a pronounced increase in circulating corticosteroid and adrenal weight. We speculate that the CRF system may mediate an aversive affect following separation from the female partner, which may facilitate proximity seeking between the pair-bonded individuals. Hence, the prairie vole model may provide insights into brain mechanisms involved in the psychopathological consequences of partner loss. |
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Boughner, R. L., & Papini, M. R. (2006). Appetitive latent inhibition in rats: preexposure performance does not predict conditioned performance. Behav. Process., 72(1), 42–51.
Abstract: Nonreinforced preexposure to a conditioned stimulus impairs subsequent conditioning with that stimulus. The goal of these studies was to assess the extent to which acquisition performance could be predicted from preexposure performance using a correlational approach. For both preexposure and autoshaping, four measures of performance were computed, including overall average lever pressing, lever pressing in the initial session, percentage change in lever pressing, and slopes. These measures were correlated in a large sample of rats trained in an autoshaping situation. None of the three measures of autoshaping performance was consistently predicted by any of the three measures of preexposure performance. These results are consistent with the view that latent inhibition is not reducible to long-term habituation.
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Bovet, D., Vauclair, J., & Blaye, A. (2005). Categorization and abstraction abilities in 3-year-old children: a comparison with monkey data. Anim. Cogn., 8(1), 53–59.
Abstract: Three-year-old children were tested on three categorization tasks of increasing levels of abstraction (used with adult baboons in an earlier study): the first was a conceptual categorization task (food vs toys), the second a perceptual matching task (same vs different objects), and the third a relational matching task in which the children had to sort pairs according to whether or not the two items belonged to the same or different categories. The children were tested using two different procedures, the first a replication of the procedure used with the baboons (pulling one rope for a category or a relationship between two objects, and another rope for the other category or relationship), the second a task based upon children's prior experiences with sorting objects (putting in the same box objects belonging to the same category or a pair of objects exemplifying the same relation). The children were able to solve the first task (conceptual categorization) when tested with the sorting into boxes procedure, and the second task (perceptual matching) when tested with both procedures. The children were able to master the third task (relational matching) only when the rules were clearly explained to them, but not when they could only watch sorting examples. In fact, the relational matching task without explanation requires analogy abilities that do not seem to be fully developed at 3 years of age. The discrepancies in performances between children tested with the two procedures, with the task explained or not, and the discrepancies observed between children and baboons are discussed in relation to differences between species and/or problem-solving strategies.
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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.
Keywords: Animals; Animals, Genetically Modified/growth & development; Behavior/physiology; Behavior, Animal; Brain/*growth & development; Cognition/*physiology; *Disease Models, Animal; Environment; Genes; Genetic Diseases, Inborn/physiopathology; Humans; Mental Retardation/classification/*genetics/*physiopathology
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Buchner, H. H. F., Obermuller, S., & Scheidl, M. (2000). Body Centre of Mass Movement in the Sound Horse. The Veterinary Journal, 160(3), 225–234.
Abstract: The body centre of mass (BCM) is a key factor in the analysis of equine locomotion, as its position and movement determines the distribution and magnitude of loads on the limbs. In this study, the three-dimensional (3D) movement of the BCM in walking and trotting horses was assessed using a kinematic, segmental method. Thirty markers representing 20 body segments were recorded in 12 sound horses while standing, walking and trotting on a treadmill using a high-speed video system. Based on segmental inertial data, 3D positions of the segmental centres of mass as well as the total BCM were calculated. The position within the trunk during square standing and the movements of the BCM were determined for the three planes. The position of the BCM in the standing horse is presented relative to external reference points. At the trot, vertical displacement amplitude of the BCM amounted to 53 (6) mm as mean (sd), which was 27% smaller than external trunk movement. Medio-lateral displacement amplitude of the BCM was 19 (4) mm, 34% less than trunk amplitude. Sagittal forward-backward oscillations of the BCM independent from general forward movement were 13 (3) mm, being 24% less than trunk movements. At the walk, vertical, medio-lateral and sagittal BCM movements were smaller than trunk movements by 43, 65 and 65% respectively. The results show reduced and efficient BCM movements compared to the trunk and form a basis for the assessment of various clinical conditions such as lameness, the influence of a rider and various dressage performances.
Keywords: Horse; centre of mass; kinematics; segment model; locomotion.
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Burden, F., & Thiemann, A. (2015). Donkeys Are Different. Proceedings of the 2015 Equine Science Society Symposium, 35(5), 376–382.
Abstract: As a unique species of equine, the donkey has certain specific variations from the horse. This review highlights the origins of the donkey and how this impacts on its behavior, physiology, and propensity to disease. The donkey is less of a flight animal and has been used by humans for pack and draught work, in areas where their ability to survive poorer diets, and transboundary disease while masking overt signs of pain and distress has made them indispensable to human livelihoods. When living as a companion animal, however, the donkey easily accumulates adipose tissue, and this may create a metabolically compromised individual prone to diseases of excess such as laminitis and hyperlipemia. They show anatomic variations from the horse especially in the hoof, upper airway, and their conformation. Variations in physiology lead to differences in the metabolism and distribution of many drugs. With over 44 million donkeys worldwide, it is important that veterinarians have the ability to understand and treat this equid effectively.
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Byrne, R. W., & Bates, L. A. (2006). Why are animals cognitive? Curr Biol, 16(12), R445–8.
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Caldwell, C. A., & Whiten, A. (2004). Testing for social learning and imitation in common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus, using an artificial fruit. Anim. Cogn., 7(2), 77–85.
Abstract: We tested for social learning and imitation in common marmosets using an artificial foraging task and trained conspecific demonstrators. We trained a demonstrator marmoset to open an artificial fruit, providing a full demonstration of the task to be learned. Another marmoset provided a partial demonstration, controlling for stimulus enhancement effects, by eating food from the outside of the apparatus. We thus compared three observer groups, each consisting of four animals: those that received the full demonstration, those that received the partial demonstration, and a control group that saw no demonstration prior to testing. Although none of the observer marmosets succeeded in opening the artificial fruit during the test periods, there were clear effects of demonstration type. Those that saw the full demonstration manipulated the apparatus more overall, whereas those from the control group manipulated it the least of the three groups. Those from the full-demonstration group also contacted the particular parts of the artificial fruit that they had seen touched (localised stimulus enhancement) to a greater extent than the other two groups. There was also an interaction between the number of hand and mouth touches made to the artificial fruit for the full- and partial-demonstration groups. Whether or not these data represent evidence for imitation is discussed. We also propose that the clear differences between the groups suggest that social learning mechanisms provide real benefits to these animals in terms of developing novel food-processing skills analogous to the one presented here.
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Call, J. (2006). Inferences by exclusion in the great apes: the effect of age and species. Anim. Cogn., 9(4), 393–403.
Abstract: This study investigated the ability of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos to make inferences by exclusion using the procedure pioneered by Premack and Premack (Cognition 50:347-362, 1994) with chimpanzees. Thirty apes were presented with two different food items (banana vs. grape) on a platform and covered with identical containers. One of the items was removed from the container and placed between the two containers so that subjects could see it. After discarding this item, subjects could select between the two containers. In Experiment 1, apes preferentially selected the container that held the item that the experimenter had not discarded, especially if subjects saw the experimenter remove the item from the container (but without seeing the container empty). Experiment 3 in which the food was removed from one of the containers behind a barrier confirmed these results. In contrast, subjects performed at chance levels when a stimulus (colored plastic chip: Exp. 1; food item: Exp. 2 and Exp. 3) designated the item that had been removed. These results indicated that apes made inferences, not just learned to use a discriminative cue to avoid the empty container. Apes perceived and treated the item discarded by the experimenter as if it were the very one that had been hidden under the container. Results suggested a positive relationship between age and inferential ability independent of memory ability but no species differences.
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Cambefort, J. P. (1981). A comparative study of culturally transmitted patterns of feeding habits in the chacma baboon Papio ursinus and the vervet monkey Cercopithecus aethiops. Folia Primatol (Basel), 36(3-4), 243–263.
Abstract: Japanese workers have studied social acquisition patterns of new feeding habits in Macaca fuscata which they have termed precultural. The present study investigates the same phenomenon in the chacma baboon and the vervet monkey in their natural habitat. The questions addressed are: (1) How a new feeding habit enters a troop and by which age and sex category, also how it is propagated? (2) When individuals are permitted with a choice between palatable and unpalatable food, can they learn by demonstration only or do they have to pass through a direct learning process? (3) Can the results from the above questions be explained by social parameters such as the social structure of the individual species? It was found that juvenile baboons discover new food and that after the discovery propagation is instantaneous. In vervets discovery is random among the age classes and propagation is slow and takes place through certain 'pivot' individuals. Both species fail to learn about palatability by demonstration but have to go through a direct learning process. This contrasts strongly with the forest baboon Mandrillus sphinx that have been shown to learn by demonstration. Socially, baboon juveniles stay closer to each other than the adults who force them to live at the periphery of the troop. Vervets again forage without precise sub-group formation. The link between social and cultural propagation and social structure is discussed on the basis of these findings.
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