| 1. |
- Griesser, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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From bird calls to human language : exploring the evolutionary drivers of compositional syntax
- 2018
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1546 .- 2352-1554. ; 21, s. 6-12
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Compositional syntax, where lexical items are combined into larger units, has been assumed to be unique to human language. Recent experiments, however, showed that Japanese tits combine alert and recruitment calls into alert-recruitment sequences when attracting conspecifics to join in mobbing a predator. We speculate that such call combinations are favoured when: Firstly, callers and receivers have shared interests in exchanging information; secondly, species produce different types of calls in different situations, leading to distinct behavioural responses in receivers; and finally, complex situations exist in which receivers benefit by combining two or more behaviours. These preconditions were also present in human ancestors. Thus, future work on bird calls may provide insights into the evolution of compositional syntax in human language.
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| 2. |
- Johansson, Fredrik, et al.
(författare)
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Mechanisms for motor timing in the cerebellar cortex
- 2016
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1554 .- 2352-1546. ; 8, s. 53-59
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- In classical eyeblink conditioning a subject learns to blink to a previously neutral stimulus. This conditional response is timed to occur just before an air puff to the eye. The learning is known to depend on the cerebellar cortex where Purkinje cells respond with adaptively timed pauses in their spontaneous firing. The pauses in the inhibitory Purkinje cells cause disinhibition of the cerebellar nuclei, which elicit the overt blinks. The timing of a Purkinje cell response was previously thought to require a temporal code in the input signal but recent work suggests that the Purkinje cells can learn to time their responses through an intrinsic mechanism that is activated by metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR7).
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| 3. |
- Kelber, Almut
(författare)
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Bird colour vision – from cones to perception
- 2019
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1554 .- 2352-1546. ; 30, s. 34-40
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Birds use spectral information for circadian control, magnetic orientation and phototaxis but most importantly for discriminating the colours of important objects such as food items or mates. Their tetrachromatic colour vision is based on four types of single cones expressing four opsin-based visual pigments and fine-tuned by the carotenoid composition in cone oil droplets. Bird colour vision is not as uniform as previously thought, and single visual pigments have been lost in several bird lineages. Diurnal birds have fine colour discrimination and good colour constancy but can generalize over similar though discriminable colours. Bird colour discrimination is ultimately limited by receptor noise but can be impaired in natural conditions, depending on light intensity and background coloration.
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| 4. |
- Bshary, Redouan, et al.
(författare)
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Fish ecology and cognition : insights from studies on wild and wild-caught teleost fishes
- 2022
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1546. ; 46
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Over the last decades, we witnessed a growing interest in animal cognition, in general, and in fish cognition, in particular. Here, we provide various study examples that employ an ecological approach to study cognition through field observations, field manipulations and laboratory tests on wild teleost fishes. In this review, we focus on cases with implications for understanding endotherm vertebrate cognition, that is, cases that show fishes possess supposedly ‘complex’ cognitive processes originally thought to warrant a more complex brain. Furthermore, in contrast to the classic interpretation of high/low performance as high/low cognitive abilities, incorporating an individual-level ecological approach reveals that low performance in a cognitive task may be caused by a mismatch between the experimental paradigm and the individual’s experience. The future avenue for wild fish cognition is to grasp better how individual, population and species differences in performance stem from differences in their ecological conditions.
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| 5. |
- Böhme, Rebecca, et al.
(författare)
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Differentiating self-touch from social touch
- 2022
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Ingår i: CURRENT OPINION IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. - : ELSEVIER. - 2352-1546. ; 43, s. 27-33
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Humans need to be able to differentiate between signals they produce themselves and signals that arise from non-self-causes. It has long been discussed that the brain uses a copy of the motor command, an efference copy, to predict the sensory outcomes of ones own action - and to attenuate these. While studies in humans suggest that cerebellum and supplementary motor area play crucial roles in the attenuation, a study in mice suggests a global suppression during self-touch. However, the sensory percepts of self-touch are not fully cancelled out. Humans touch themselves frequently suggesting a behavioral relevance of self-touch, as to refocus attention, to calm oneself down during stress, to itch or for self-enjoyment. We discuss studies on sensory attenuation as well as the behavioral relevance of self-touch and open questions for future research.
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| 9. |
- Larsson, Max, et al.
(författare)
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Role of C-tactile fibers in pain modulation : animal and human perspectives
- 2022
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1546. ; 43
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- C-tactile (CT) fibers, a population of unmyelinated (C) fibers that respond particularly well to gentle stroking, are widely believed to subserve affective touch. However, these fibers (termed C low-threshold mechanoreceptors (C-LTMRs) in non-human mammals) have also been proposed to be involved in the modulation of pain. Intriguingly, functional evidence from both human and animal studies indicates that CT/C-LTMR fibers can both contribute to allodynia as well as mediate pain inhibition. In the spinal cord, C-LTMR fibers form glomerular synaptic arrangements, providing input to several populations of interneurons within the nociceptive circuitry. Thus, the CT/C-LTMR system conveys signals that are subject to intricate processing in the spinal cord and is well-situated within spinal sensory pathways to enable the modulation of pain.
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| 10. |
- Lövdén, Martin, 1972, et al.
(författare)
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Human Skill Learning: Expansion, Exploration, Selection, and Refinement
- 2020
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1546. ; 36, s. 163-168
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2020 The Authors Learning, or the process of acquiring knowledge and skill, allows humans to shape and adapt to their environments during development. Researchers have long theorized that the principal brain processes behind learning resemble a recruitment process. The brain initially explores an expanded pool of candidate neural circuits. Based on outcomes, the most promising candidate circuit is selected for refinement. Partly fuelled by new methods, the last decade of research on learning-related functional and structural changes in rodents has supported this theory, and, more recently, related evidence has started to emerge from human studies. We emphasize the need for formal theories and neurocomputational modelling of cortical plasticity to guide work on open issues, such as the link between functional and structural changes.
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| 11. |
- Morrison, India
(författare)
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Affective and discriminative touch: a reappraisal
- 2022
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Ingår i: CURRENT OPINION IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. - : ELSEVIER. - 2352-1546. ; 43, s. 145-151
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The role of CT afferents in affective touch is often viewed in contrast with the more well-established neural and functional systems supporting discriminative touch. However, a recent groundswell of evidence suggests that a categorical affective versus-discriminative contrast may not bear scrutiny at all levels of the nervous system, especially when applied to finer grained anatomical and functional relationships. Discrepancies in this evidence can be addressed by taking the layered phylogenetic history of specialized afferent systems into account, and how this history may have influenced functional integration within complex spinal circuits and brain networks in generating bodily states and behavior. This perspective inspires four proposed body-behavior reference frames, within which somatosensory-behavior relationships can be schematized in the nervous system of the behaving human: (1) proximal-distal (regarding the body axis and limbs, (2) somaticskeletomotor (regarding efferent effectors) (3) reactive predictive (regarding responses to external events); and (4) passive/receptive-active/motivated (with particular application to socially interactive behavior). Affective and discriminative functions can be dissociated at the extremes of these frame spaces without necessarily existing as discrete categories.
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| 12. |
- Nilsson, Artur, et al.
(författare)
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The authoritarian-conservatism nexus
- 2020
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Ingår i: CURRENT OPINION IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES. - : ELSEVIER. - 2352-1546. ; 34, s. 148-154
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The authors of The Authoritarian Personality famously posited a psychological affinity between the authoritarian personality syndrome and politically conservative ideology. Seven decades later, we evaluate the empirical evidence bearing on this hypothesis. We conclude that: (a) there is a large body of evidence, including data from six continents and many different measures, documenting a positive association between authoritarianism and right-wing conservatism; (b) the association is observed in studies with ideologically neutral measures of authoritarianism, indicating that it is not a methodological artifact; (c) there is still no convincing counter-evidence that authoritarianism is equally prevalent on the left and right in Western societies, despite many attempts to procure such evidence; and (d) the authoritarian-conservatism nexus possesses both context-dependent and contex-tindependent features. In summary, the evidence of an affinity between authoritarianism and conservatism is strong, although more research focusing on specific aspects of authoritarianism, ideological subtypes, and contextual moderators is recommended.
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| 13. |
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| 14. |
- Perini, Irene, et al.
(författare)
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Beyond distress : a role for positive affect in nonsuicidal self-injury
- 2021
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier. - 2352-1546. ; 39, s. 209-215
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The ability to generate and regulate emotional experiences is critical to psychological well-being. Impairments in emotion regulatory processes have transdiagnostic associations with psychopathology. Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is prevalent in adolescent populations, especially clinical adolescent populations, and often linked to emotion regulatory deficits. Clinical observations propose a role for NSSI behaviors in regulating affect, suggesting that these behaviors may arise when other emotion regulatory strategies are insufficient or inaccessible. Experimental evidence has begun to explore the psychophysiological and neural underpinnings of emotion processing in NSSI populations. Thus far, a primary focus has been the role of NSSI in regulation of affect in response to stressful or negative states or stimuli, often suggesting enhanced reactivity in such situations. However, recent evidence suggests that NSSI populations may also display heightened reactivity to positive or rewarding stimuli. Here, we highlight this emerging data and how it may be integrated into existing NSSI framework.
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| 15. |
- Rabasa-Papio, Cristina, et al.
(författare)
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Impact of stress on metabolism and energy balance
- 2016
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1546. ; 9, s. 71-77
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The stress response mobilizes the body's energy stores in order to respond to a threatening situation. A striking observation is the diversity of metabolic changes that can occur in response to stress. On one hand acute intense stress is commonly associated with feeding suppression and reduced body weight gain. The activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the release of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) might partially explain the anorexigenic effects of acute stress. CRH can also stimulate the sympathetic nervous system and catecholamine release, inducing hypophagia and weight loss, through their effects on the liver and on white and brown adipose tissue. On the other hand, chronic stress can lead to dietary over-consumption (especially palatable foods), increased visceral adiposity and weight gain. These obesogenic effects of stress are mainly explained by the chronic release of glucocorticoids and neuropeptide Y. Stressful situations can activate all of these systems together, and the metabolic outcome of stress exposure is determined by a host of intrinsic and external factors. If we are to find new ways to limit the development of stress-linked cardiometabolic diseases, we need to discover why, in some circumstances, the pro-obesogenic effects of stress outweigh its anorexigenic effects. The equilibrium between the different components of the stress response that accompany chronic stress situations could be crucial to understand and prevent the long-lasting adverse metabolic effects induced by stress. © 2016.Published by Elsevier Ltd.
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| 16. |
- Uvnäs-Moberg, Kerstin, et al.
(författare)
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Physiological effects induced by stimulation of cutaneous sensory nerves, with a focus on oxytocin
- 2022
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Ingår i: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-1546. ; 43, s. 159-166
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Gentle touch is mediated by CT afferents and is linked to the experience of pleasure by effects in the insular cortex. It is also associated with some antistress effects, lower levels of anxiety and pain reduction. A similar effect pattern is induced by oxytocin. In the present article, we describe the structure of the hypothalamic oxytocinergic system, in particular the pathways involved in reduction of anxiety, stress and pain. We detail how oxytocin exerts powerful anti-stress effects by antagonizing the release of and effects of corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) and noradrenaline (NA), the main central regulators of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and of the autonomic nervous system. It is suggested that CT fibers connect to the oxytocin system, and that oxytocin mediates the decrease of sympathetic nerve activity, increase of parasympathetic nerve activity as well as the reduction of pain and anxiety, induced by gentle touch. Thus, by reducing stress, repeated activation of CT afferents may be linked to better health.
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