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Animal Cognition

N C Wiley, T G Dinan, R P Ross, C Stanton, G Clarke, J F Cryan
The brain-gut-microbiota axis comprises an extensive communication network between the brain, the gut, and the microbiota residing there. Development of a diverse gut microbiota is vital for multiple features of behavior and physiology, as well as many fundamental aspects of brain structure and function. Appropriate early-life assembly of the gut microbiota is also believed to play a role in subsequent emotional and cognitive development. If the composition, diversity, or assembly of the gut microbiota is impaired, this impairment can have a negative impact on host health and lead to disorders such as obesity, diabetes, inflammatory diseases, and even potentially neuropsychiatric illnesses, including anxiety and depression...
July 2017: Journal of Animal Science
Leon R Sütfeld, Richard Gast, Peter König, Gordon Pipa
Self-driving cars are posing a new challenge to our ethics. By using algorithms to make decisions in situations where harming humans is possible, probable, or even unavoidable, a self-driving car's ethical behavior comes pre-defined. Ad hoc decisions are made in milliseconds, but can be based on extensive research and debates. The same algorithms are also likely to be used in millions of cars at a time, increasing the impact of any inherent biases, and increasing the importance of getting it right. Previous research has shown that moral judgment and behavior are highly context-dependent, and comprehensive and nuanced models of the underlying cognitive processes are out of reach to date...
2017: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
Isabel Martins, Isaura Tavares
The involvement of the reticular formation (RF) in the transmission and modulation of nociceptive information has been extensively studied. The brainstem RF contains several areas which are targeted by spinal cord afferents conveying nociceptive input. The arrival of nociceptive input to the RF may trigger alert reactions which generate a protective/defense reaction to pain. RF neurons located at the medulla oblongata and targeted by ascending nociceptive information are also involved in the control of vital functions that can be affected by pain, namely cardiovascular control...
2017: Frontiers in Neuroanatomy
Oliver C Witard, Derek Ball
The theme of The Nutrition Society Spring Conference 2017 was on the interaction between nutrition and exercise for promoting healthy ageing, maintaining cognitive function and improving the metabolic health of the population. The importance of this theme is highlighted by the public health issues surrounding obesity, diabetes and the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass (sarcopenia). The opening symposium provided a historical perspective of both invasive and non-invasive methodologies for measuring exercise energetics and energy balance...
July 19, 2017: Proceedings of the Nutrition Society
Xing-Jie Li, Li Liang, Hong-Xia Shi, Xiao-Ping Sun, Jing Wang, Lian-Sheng Zhang
BACKGROUND: Curdione is one of the most highly concentrated component of the active constituents in E-zhu, which has been reported to possess a variety of activities. However, the pharmacologic neuroprotective activity of curdione has not been evaluated. The present study aimed to investigate the protective effect of curdione on focal cerebral ischemia reperfusion-induced injury in rats and further exploring the underlying mechanisms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Adult male Sprague Dawley rats were subjected to middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) surgery for 2 h, followed by reperfusion stage...
2017: Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment
K M Braunscheidel, J T Gass, P J Mulholland, S B Floresco, J J Woodward
While thepsychoactive inhalant toluene causes behavioral effects similarto those produced by other drugs of abuse, the persistent behavioral and anatomical abnormalities induced by toluene exposure are not well known. To mimic human "binge-like" inhalant intoxication, adolescent, male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to toluene vapor (57000 ppm) twice daily for five consecutive days. These rats remained in their home cages until adulthood (P60), when they were trained in operant boxes to respond to a palatable food reward and then challenged with several different cognitive tasks...
July 15, 2017: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
Megha Verma, J S Schneider
Exposure to lead (Pb) remains a significant public health concern. Lead exposure in early life impairs the normal development of numerous cognitive and neurobehavioral processes. Previous work has shown that the effects of developmental Pb exposure on gene expression patterns in the brain are modulated by various factors including the developmental timing of the exposure, level of exposure, sex, and genetic background. Using gene microarray profiling, we previously reported a significant strain-specific effect of Pb exposure on the hippocampal transcriptome, with the greatest number of differentially expressed transcripts in Long Evans (LE) rats and the fewest in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats...
July 15, 2017: Neurotoxicology
Sarah J Spencer, Heather D'Angelo, Alita Soch, Linda R Watkins, Steven F Maier, Ruth M Barrientos
More Americans are consuming diets higher in saturated fats and refined sugars than ever before, and based on increasing obesity rates, this is a growing trend among older adults as well. While high saturated fat diet (HFD) consumption has been shown to sensitize the inflammatory response to a subsequent immune challenge in young adult rats, the inflammatory effect of HFD in the already-vulnerable aging brain has not yet been assessed. Here, we explored whether short-term (3 days) consumption of HFD would serve as a neuroinflammatory trigger in aging animals, leading to cognitive deficits...
June 24, 2017: Neurobiology of Aging
Caitlin L Anderson, Michael M Kasumovic
Cognitive functioning is vital for enabling animals of all taxa to optimise their chances of survival and reproductive success. Learning and memory in particular are drivers of many evolutionary processes. In this study, we examine how developmental plasticity can affect cognitive ability by exploring the role the early social environment has on problem solving ability and learning of female black field crickets, Teleogryllus commodus. We used two learning paradigms, an analog of the Morris water maze and a novel linear maze, to examine cognitive differences between individuals reared in two acoustic treatments: silence or calling...
2017: PeerJ
Susanne J van Veluw, Andy Y Shih, Eric E Smith, Christopher Chen, Julie A Schneider, Joanna M Wardlaw, Steven M Greenberg, Geert Jan Biessels
Cerebral microinfarcts are small lesions that are presumed to be ischaemic. Despite the small size of these lesions, affected individuals can have hundreds to thousands of cerebral microinfarcts, which cause measurable disruption to structural brain connections, and are associated with dementia that is independent of Alzheimer's disease pathology or larger infarcts (ie, lacunar infarcts, and large cortical and non-lacunar subcortical infarcts). Substantial progress has been made with regard to understanding risk factors and functional consequences of cerebral microinfarcts, partly driven by new in-vivo detection methods and the development of animal models that closely mimic multiple aspects of cerebral microinfarcts in human beings...
July 14, 2017: Lancet Neurology
Miyuru Chandradasa, Layani Champika
Yan Li, Ziqi Zhao, Jiajia Cai, Boya Gu, Yuanyuan Lv, Li Zhao
A decline in cardiovascular modulation is a feature of the normal aging process and associated with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) such as hypertension and stroke. Exercise training is known to promote cardiovascular adaptation in young animals and positive effects on motor and cognitive capabilities, as well as on brain plasticity for all ages in mice. Here, we examine the question of whether aerobic exercise interventions may impact the GABAergic neurons of the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) in aged rats which have been observed to have a decline in cardiovascular integration function...
2017: Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
Minkyung Kim, Seunghwan Kim, George A Mashour, UnCheol Lee
How the brain reconstitutes consciousness and cognition after a major perturbation like general anesthesia is an important question with significant neuroscientific and clinical implications. Recent empirical studies in animals and humans suggest that the recovery of consciousness after anesthesia is not random but ordered. Emergence patterns have been classified as progressive and abrupt transitions from anesthesia to consciousness, with associated differences in duration and electroencephalogram (EEG) properties...
2017: Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
Andrew P Maurer, Sarah A Johnson, Abbi R Hernandez, Jordan Reasor, Daniela M Cossio, Kaeli E Fertal, Jack M Mizell, Katelyn N Lubke, Benjamin J Clark, Sara N Burke
Age-related memory deficits correlate with dysfunction in the CA3 subregion of the hippocampus, which includes both hyperactivity and overly rigid activity patterns. While changes in intrinsic membrane currents and interneuron alterations are involved in this process, it is not known whether alterations in afferent input to CA3 also contribute. Neurons in layer II of the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) project directly to CA3 through the perforant path, but no data are available regarding the effects of advanced age on LEC activity and whether these activity patterns update in response to environmental change...
2017: Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
Tomoaki Nakazono, Travis N Lam, Ayushi Y Patel, Masashi Kitazawa, Takashi Saito, Takaomi C Saido, Kei M Igarashi
The entorhinal cortex (EC) has bidirectional connections with the hippocampus and plays a critical role in memory formation and retrieval. EC is one of the most vulnerable regions in the brain in early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a neurodegenerative disease with progressive memory impairments. Accumulating evidence from healthy behaving animals indicates gamma oscillations (30-100 Hz) as critical for mediating interactions in the circuit between EC and hippocampus. However, it is still unclear whether gamma oscillations have causal relationship with memory impairment in AD...
2017: Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
Fred Keijzer, Argyris Arnellos
Godfrey-Smith's environmental complexity thesis (ECT) is most often applied to multicellular animals and the complexity of their macroscopic environments to explain how cognition evolved. We think that the ECT may be less suited to explain the origins of the animal bodily organization, including this organization's potentiality for dealing with complex macroscopic environments. We argue that acquiring the fundamental sensorimotor features of the animal body may be better explained as a consequence of dealing with internal bodily-rather than environmental complexity...
2017: Biology & Philosophy
Brandon S Demuth, Maud C O Ferrari, Lynn P Weber, David M Janz, Douglas P Chivers
Organisms faced with stressors deploy a suite of adaptive responses in the form of behavioral, physiological and cognitive modifications to overcome the challenge. Interactive effects of these responses are known to influence learning and memory processes and facilitation is thought to be dependent, in part, upon contextual relevance of the stressor to the learning task. Predation is one such stressor for prey animals, and their ability to manage reliable information about predators is essential for adaptive antipredator strategies...
July 13, 2017: Hormones and Behavior
Charlotte K Callaghan, Jennifer Rouine, Shane M O'Mara
Aerobic exercise has marked effects on mood and cognition. Here, we used an interferon-alpha (IFN-α) induced depression model to evaluate the potential efficacy of chronic treadmill running on mood and cognition in the rat. IFN-α treatment induces behavioral deficits in the forced swim test (FST), open field test and object exploration task. Male han Wistar rats (n=8 per group, 3month old) were injected 3 times weekly with recombinant human IFN-α or saline (control) for 4weeks. One group was exercised 3 times (1h treadmill running) per week while the other remained sedentary...
July 12, 2017: Physiology & Behavior
Jinook Oh, Marisa Hoeschele, Stephan A Reber, Vedrana Šlipogor, Thomas Bugnyar, W Tecumseh Fitch
Head turning experiments are widely used to test the cognition of both human infants and non-human animal species. Monitoring head turns allows researchers to non-invasively assess attention to acoustic or visual stimuli. In the majority of head turning experiments, the head direction analyses have been accomplished manually, which is extremely labor intensive and can be affected by subjectivity or other human errors and limitations. In the current study, we introduce an open-source computer program for measuring head directions of freely moving animals including common marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus), American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis), and Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) to reduce human effort and time in video coding...
July 14, 2017: Behavior Research Methods
Victor Mathis, Lucas Lecourtier
Our memory abilities, whether they involve short-term working memory or long-term episodic or procedural memories, are essential for our well-being, our capacity to adapt to constraints of our environment and survival. Therefore, several key brain regions and neurotransmitter systems are engaged in the processing of sensory information to either maintain such information in working memory so that it will quickly be used, and/or participate in the elaboration and storage of enduring traces useful for longer periods of time...
July 11, 2017: Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior
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