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PubMed2004

Kin-biased distribution in brown trout: an effect of redd location or kin recognition?

A wide range of animals have been reported to show kin-biased behaviours, such as reduced aggressiveness and increased food sharing among relatives. However, less is known about whether wild animals also associate with relatives under natural conditions, which is a prerequisite to facilitate kin-biased behaviours and hence kin selection. We tested, by means of microsatellite polymorphism, correlations between pair-wise relatedness and pair-wise metric distance in wild brown trout (Salmo trutta L.) under natural conditions in two streams. Our data show that young-of-the-year as well as older trout found close together also had a higher genetic relatedness in one of the two streams, whereas no relationship was found in the other stream. Very few half and full siblings were found in the second stream and under these conditions it is unlikely that kin-biased behaviours will receive positive selection. We discuss the underlying mechanisms for the observed structure and we specifically address the issue of whether the grouping of related individuals could reflect dispersal from the same spawning redds, or if it reflects active association with relatives, possibly conferring kin-selected advantages.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

The influence of "preparedness" on autoshaping, schedule performance, and choice.

Two groups of experimentally naive pigeons were exposed to an autoshaping procedure in which the response key was mounted on the wall (the conventional location) or on the floor of the chamber. In two experiments, subjects readily responded to the wall key, but floor-key subjects required shaping. A subsequent experiment compared performance of wall- and floor-key groups on an ascending series of fixed-ratio schedule values, resistance to extinction, differential reinforcement of other behavior, and reversal of key assignment. Each experiment was followed by several sessions of fixed-ratio training; the performance of the wall- and floor-key groups was almost identical throughout. In the final experiment, a fixed-ratio requirement could be completed on either or both keys. Birds initially chose the key on which they had responded during the preceding (reversal of key assignment) experiment. However, within a few sessions both groups showed almost exclusive preference for the floor key. Preference for a key located on the floor may follow from the fact that pigeons are ground feeders and may thus be more "prepared" to peck the floor than to peck a wall. However, autoshaping, under the conditions prevailing here, occurred much more readily to the wall key, suggesting that pecking a vertical surface is more highly prepared. Difficulties in determining relative preparedness seem moot, however, given the lack of between-group differences in the intervening experiments. It is thus unlikely that schedule performances critically depend upon the specific operant response involved.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

Competition for space among sessile marine invertebrates: changes in HSP70 expression in two Pacific cnidarians.

The role of stress proteins-either constitutive (HSC) or inducible (HSP)-of the HSP70 family in intra- and interspecific competition for space was examined in two sessile Pacific cnidarians. Anthopleura elegantissima, an intertidal anemone, and Corynactis californica, a subtidal corallimorpharian, express HSP70 in the absence of apparent physical stress. HSP70 protein expression is concentrated in the tentacles of A. elegantissima when the animal is exposed to contact with other benthic organisms. Under the same conditions, however, HSP concentrations are similar in the body and tentacles of C. californica. When two different clones of A. elegantissima interact in the field, the outside polyps (warriors) express more HSP70 than the inside ones (2.4 versus 0.6 ng HSP70/microg Protein). When different C. californica clones interact, HSP70 expression in the outside and inside polyps is similar (1.5 versus 1.8 ng HSP70/microg P) and is fairly constant in the corallimorpharian in the different interspecific encounters. HSP70 expression is related to the different kinds of aggression encountered by both cnidarians. HSP70 expression may be involved in the recovery of tissues damaged by the allelochemical, cytotoxical, or corrosive substances produced by different enemies. C. californica clones appear prepared for war, as evidenced by the high constant expression of HSP70 in the polyps. A. elegantissima exhibits differential HSP70 expression depending on the identity of each neighboring intra- or interspecific sessile competitor. We propose that stress proteins can be used to quantify space competition or aggression among sessile marine invertebrates.

Agonistic Behavior↗
PubMed2001

Behavioral and morphological consequences of primary astrocytes transplanted into the rat cortex immediately after nucleus basalis ibotenic lesion.

Adult male rats received transplants of dissociated 30-day old cultured cortical astrocytes into the ipsilateral frontal and parietal cortex immediately after unilateral ibotenic acid lesion of the NBM or after sham injury. We hypothesized that transplants of astrocytes into the acetylcholine-deprived cortex might provide trophic support to terminals arising from damaged NBM neurons. Twenty four hours after transplantation and every other day for 11 days post surgery, the animals were tested for locomotion and habituation in an open field. NBM lesion reduced vertical movements only as compared to no lesion and no transplant counterparts. Nine days after surgery rats with NBM lesion and astrocyte-transplants into the cortex were as impaired in the acquisition of a passive avoidance (PA) task as untreated counterparts. Animals with no lesions and transplants into the cortex also had significant PA acquisition deficits. All rats with ibotenic lesion were significantly impaired on PA retention as compared to rats with no lesions. Astrocyte-transplants survived up to 2 months after cortical implantation but these transplants produced severe laminar disruption and gliosis. This effect was greater in rats with NBM lesion than in intact animals with transplants into the cortex. These data show that astrocyte-transplants do not promote functional recovery after NBM lesion and suggest an immune rejection of the astrocyte transplants by the host brain.

Acetylcholine↗
PubMed2006

Use of enclosures with functional vertical space by captive rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) involved in biomedical research.

We assessed space use by 2 pairs of captive female rhesus monkeys recently transferred into 2 enclosures moderately larger than their former traditional research cages and providing elevated perches at or above human eye level for all monkeys. This new space did not affect the ongoing biomedical research in which these captive monkeys were involved, and we sought to determine whether they used the elevated positions preferentially, as do wild animals. The frequency and duration of visits at each of the 9 distinct regions within these enclosures was calculated during 30-min morning and evening sessions over 20 d. We found that the monkeys frequented all regions of their enclosures in a similar manner during both morning and evening sessions. However, the duration spent at each region varied significantly between morning and evening sessions, with high perches being chosen preferentially in the evenings. Overall, the monkeys spent the majority of their time at elevated positions. These results support the view that access to functional vertical space provides a preferred environment for species- specific behavior and is an option that should be considered by other research facilities.

Animals↗
PubMed1977

Brief reports influence of "mentally retarded" label on teachers' nonverbal behavior toward preschool children.

Teachers (N = 12) were assigned to either an experimental (labeled) or control (nonlabeled) child. All children were, in fact, nonhandicapped and had no diagnosis or record of mental retardation. After reading a description (labeled or nonlabeled) of their child's developmental status, each teacher read their child a story. The results indicated that teachers were more immediate (i.e., showed less social distance) to children bearing the "mentally retarded" label. Implications of this finding were discussed.

Behavior↗
PubMed2005

Home bases formed to visual cues but not to self-movement (dead reckoning) cues in exploring hippocampectomized rats.

Spatial theory proposes that the hippocampus contributes to exploratory behavior allowing animals to acquire information about their environment. In the present study, the exploratory movements of control rats, bulbectomized (anosmic) rats and hippocampectomized rats using the neurotoxin N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) were monitored on a large circular table without walls and around which visual cues were manipulated. The rats displayed organized spatial behavior in that they developed home bases, one or more places operationally defined as those in which they spent a preponderance of time, in which they moved slowly, and to which they returned after excursions. Control rats and hippocampectomized rats were similar in that they established home bases: (i) adjacent to a proximal stable or moving visual landmark; (ii) in relation to more distant visual room cues; and (iii) in relation to contextually conditioned visual cues. Nevertheless, in exploratory tests given under infrared light, a wavelength to which rats are insensitive, control rats and bulbectomized rats established one or more home bases that were not dependent upon surface (e.g. olfactory) cues, whereas home base behavior was absent/fragmented in hippocampectomized rats. Thus, exploratory behavior, as exemplified by home base behavior, is organized in control and hippocampectomized rats in relation to visual cues, but is not organized in hippocampectomized rats when visual cues are absent. This result is discussed in relation to the idea that the hippocampus contributes to spatial behavior that is dependent upon guidance (dead reckoning) derived from self-movement cues.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed2002

A hippocampal NR2B deficit can mimic age-related changes in long-term potentiation and spatial learning in the Fischer 344 rat.

Aged rats are known to have deficits in spatial learning behavior in the Morris water maze. We have found that aged rats also have deficits in NR2B protein expression and that the protein expression deficit is correlated with their performance in the Morris water maze. To test whether this NR2B deficit was sufficient to account for the behavioral deficit, we used antisense oligonucleotides to specifically knock down NR2B subunit expression in the hippocampus of young rats. NR2B antisense treatment diminished NMDA receptor responses, abolished NMDA-dependent long-term potentiation (LTP), and impaired spatial learning. These data demonstrate the important role of NR2B in LTP and learning and memory and suggest a role for reduced NR2B expression in age-related cognitive decline.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed2004

Grabbing your ear: rapid auditory-somatosensory multisensory interactions in low-level sensory cortices are not constrained by stimulus alignment.

Multisensory interactions are observed in species from single-cell organisms to humans. Important early work was primarily carried out in the cat superior colliculus and a set of critical parameters for their occurrence were defined. Primary among these were temporal synchrony and spatial alignment of bisensory inputs. Here, we assessed whether spatial alignment was also a critical parameter for the temporally earliest multisensory interactions that are observed in lower-level sensory cortices of the human. While multisensory interactions in humans have been shown behaviorally for spatially disparate stimuli (e.g. the ventriloquist effect), it is not clear if such effects are due to early sensory level integration or later perceptual level processing. In the present study, we used psychophysical and electrophysiological indices to show that auditory-somatosensory interactions in humans occur via the same early sensory mechanism both when stimuli are in and out of spatial register. Subjects more rapidly detected multisensory than unisensory events. At just 50 ms post-stimulus, neural responses to the multisensory 'whole' were greater than the summed responses from the constituent unisensory 'parts'. For all spatial configurations, this effect followed from a modulation of the strength of brain responses, rather than the activation of regions specifically responsive to multisensory pairs. Using the local auto-regressive average source estimation, we localized the initial auditory-somatosensory interactions to auditory association areas contralateral to the side of somatosensory stimulation. Thus, multisensory interactions can occur across wide peripersonal spatial separations remarkably early in sensory processing and in cortical regions traditionally considered unisensory.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Alterations in the immunoreactivity for muscarinic acetylcholine receptors and colocalized PKC gamma in mouse hippocampus induced by spatial discrimination learning.

This study describes changes in the immunoreactivity for muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAChRs) in the hippocampus of mice in relation to spatial discrimination behavior, employing the monoclonal antibody M35 raised against purified bovine mAChR protein. Performance in a hole board in which the animals learned the pattern of 4 baited holes out of 16 holes served as the measure of spatial discrimination learning and memory. Twenty-six adult male house mice were used, divided into four groups. Three groups served as various controls: group N (naive; blank controls); group H (habituated; animals were introduced to the hole board with all holes baited for 5 consecutive days), and group P (pseudo-trained; the animals were admitted to the hole board for 13 consecutive days with all holes baited). The T group (trained) was subjected to the hole board for 5 consecutive habituation days with all holes baited (similar to the H and P groups), followed by 8 successive training days with only four holes baited in a fixed pattern. During the 8 training days, the T group gradually acquired a pattern to visit the baited holes, whereas the P group continued visiting holes in a random fashion. The mice were killed 24 h after the last behavioral session. All principal cells in teh cornu ammonis (CA) and dentate gyrus (DG) of the habituated animals revealed increased levels of mAChR immunoreactivity (mAChR-ir) over the naive mice. A minor increase in mAChR-ir was found in the apical dendrites of the CA1 pyramidal cells. Pseudotraining resulted in a CA1-CA2 region with a low level of mAChR-ir, resembling naive animals, whereas the trained mice showed a further increase in mAChR-ir in the CA1-CA2 pyramidal cell bodies and apical dendrites. Optical density measures of the mAChR-ir in the CA1 region revealed a significant (P < 0.05) increase in the pyramidal cell bodies of the H and T group over the N and P group, and a significant (P < 0.05) increase in the apical dendrites of the T group over all other groups. In contrast to the CA1-CA2 region, both pseudotrained and trained mice revealed high mAChR staining in the CA3-CA4 region and the DG. These results indicate that prolonged exposure to the hole board is sufficient for an enhanced mAChR-ir in the CA3-CA4 and DG, whereas the increase in CA1-CA2 pyramidal cells is a training-specific feature related to spatial orientation. Nonpyramidal neurons within the CA1-CA2 region with enhanced mAChR-ir in the pyramidal cells, however, revealed a decreased level of mAChR-ir. The opposing effect of pyramidal and nonpyramidal cells suggests a shift in the excitability of the hippocampal microcircuitry. Previously we demonstrated an increase and redistribution of hippocampal protein kinase C gamma-immunoreactivity (PKC gamma-ir) induced by hole board learning in mice (Van der Zee et al., 1992, J Neurosci 12:4808-4815). Immunofluorescence double-labeling experiments conducted in the present study in naive and trained animals revealed that the principal cells and DG interneurons co-express mAChRs and PKC gamma, and that the immunoreactivity for both markers increased in relation to spatial orientation within these neurons. The mAChR-positive nonpyramidal cells of the CA1-CA2 region were devoid of PKC gamma and revealed an opposite training-induced effect. These results suggest that the postsynaptic changes in mAChR- and PKC gamma-ir reflect functional alterations of the hippocampal formation induced by spatial learning.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Memantine protects against LPS-induced neuroinflammation, restores behaviorally-induced gene expression and spatial learning in the rat.

Neuroinflammation is reliably associated with the pathogenesis of a number of neurodegenerative diseases, and can be detected by the presence of activated microglia. Neuroinflammation can be induced by chronic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) infusion into the 4th ventricle of the rat resulting in region-selective microglia activation and impaired hippocampal-dependent memory. Furthermore, this treatment results in altered behaviorally-induced expression of the immediate early gene Arc, indicating altered network activity. LPS is known to activate microglia directly, leading to increased glutamate release, and in enhanced N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) -dependent signaling. Taken together, the foregoing suggests that decreasing NMDA receptor activation during early stages of chronic neuroinflammation should reduce a) microglia activation, b) overexpression of Arc, and c) spatial memory deficits. Memantine, a low to moderate affinity open channel uncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, at low doses was used here to test these hypotheses. Rats were chronically infused into the 4th ventricle for 28 days with LPS alone, vehicle alone (via osmotic minipump) or LPS and memantine (10 mg/kg/day memantine s.c.). The results reported here demonstrate that memantine reduces OX6-immunolabeling for activated microglia, spares resident microglia, returns Arc (activity-regulated cytoskeletal associated protein, protein) -expressing neuronal populations to control levels (as revealed by Arc immunolabeling and fluorescence in situ hybridization), and ameliorates the spatial memory impairments produced by LPS alone. These data indicate that memantine therapy at low doses, recreating plasma levels similar to those of therapeutic doses in human, acts in part through its ability to reduce the effects of neuroinflammation, resulting in normal gene expression patterns and spatial learning. Combined, these findings suggest that low, therapeutically relevant doses of memantine delivered early in the development of neuroinflammation-influenced diseases may confer neural and cognitive protection.

Animals↗
PubMed1992

Testosterone improves maze performance and induces development of a male hippocampus in females.

In a combined behavioral and morphometric study, we observed a testosterone-related sexual dimorphism in the granule cell layer of the hippocampus of Sprague-Dawley rats that appears to be related to sex differences in spatial performance. This cell layer was larger and laterally asymmetrical in males. Neonatal testosterone treatment of females resulted in a more male-like hippocampus. These treated females also performed better than controls, and as well as males, on a spatial navigation task. In addition, a strong correlation between the size of granule cell layers and maze performance was detected.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Reversible inactivation of hippocampus and dorsolateral striatum in C57BL/6 and DBA/2 inbred mice failed to show interaction between memory systems in these genotypes.

C57BL/6 and DBA/2 mice with cannulae inserted bilaterally in the dorsal hippocampus or the dorsolateral striatum were released from the south arm of a cross maze and trained to find food in the east arm. Probe trials on which mice were released from the north arm were given following short or prolonged training. Prior to the probe trials, mice received intra-hippocampal or intra-striatal injections of lidocaine or saline. Results show that saline-injected C57BL/6 were fundamentally place learners whereas saline-injected DBA/2 mice did not engage any predominant system. Inactivating the hippocampus or the dorsolateral striatum in C56BL/6 mice disrupted place learning without promoting response learning. Inactivating the same brain sites in DBA/2 mice did not affect their behaviour. Thus, contrary to that observed in rats, disrupting the neural substrate of one memory system can abolish learning in that system but does not promote the use of another system in these genotypes.

Analysis of Variance↗