Search results for "ethology"
showing 10 items of 162 documents
Rapid neural encoding of the contrast between native and nonnative speech in the alpha band
2021
AbstractMore than half of the world’s population is multilingual, yet it is not known how the human brain encodes the perception of native vs. nonnative speech. To find out, we asked German native speakers to detect the onset of native and nonnative (English and Turkish) vowels in a roving standard stimulation. Using EEG, we show that nonnativeness is robustly registered by an increase in phase coherence in the alpha band (8-12 Hz), beginning as early as ∼100 ms after stimulus onset and lasting more than 200 ms. The alpha band effect is speech-specific, successfully predicts the response speed advantage of nonnative speech, and grants ∼90% decoding accuracy in distinguishing native vs. nonn…
The Role of Negative Affect in Emotional Processing of Food-Related Images in Eating Disorders and Obesity
2021
The aim of the present study was to analyze differences in the emotional processing (valence, arousal, and dominance) of food-related information in patients with eating disorders (ED), patients with obesity, and healthy women. Moreover, the mediator role of negative affect and the moderating role of the diagnostic group (ED vs. non-ED) were analyzed. Method: The sample consisted of 94 women (39 with eating disorders, 19 with obesity, and 36 healthy participants). Measures: International Affective Picture System (IAPS) food picture exposure task; Self-Assessment Manikin Analog-Visual Scale (SAM) appraising Arousal, Valence, and Dominance; Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-26); Positive and Negativ…
Pharmacological Characterization of Melanocortin Receptors in Fish Suggests an Important Role for ACTH
2005
The melanocortin (MC) receptor subtypes have distinctive characteristic binding profiles. We found that the trout and Fugu MC4 receptors have similar affinity for alpha-MSH and beta-MSH and a much higher affinity for ACTH than does the human MC4 receptor. The Fugu MC1 and the trout and Fugu MC5 receptors also have higher affinity for ACTH-derived peptides than alpha-, beta-, or gamma-MSH. It is tempting to speculate that ACTH-derived peptides may have played an important role as "original" ligands at the MC receptors, while the specificity of the different subtypes for the alpha-, beta-, and gamma-MSH peptides may have appeared at later stages during vertebrate evolution.
Item Response Trees: a recommended method for analyzing categorical data in behavioral studies
2015
Behavioral data are notable for presenting challenges to their statistical analysis, often due to the difficulties in measuring behavior on a quantitative scale. Instead, a range of qualitative alternative responses is recorded. These can often be understood as the outcome of a sequence of binary decisions. For example, faced by a predator, an individual may decide to flee or stay. If it stays, it may decide to freeze or display a threat and if it displays a threat, it may choose from several alternative forms of display. Here we argue that instead of being analyzed using traditional nonparametric statistics or a series of separate analyses split by response categories, this kind of data ca…
Fixed point results for α-implicit contractions with application to integral equations
2016
Recently, Aydi et al. [On fixed point results for α-implicit contractions in quasi-metric spaces and consequences, Nonlinear Anal. Model. Control, 21(1):40–56, 2016] proved some fixed point results involving α-implicit contractive conditions in quasi-b-metric spaces. In this paper we extend and improve these results and derive some new fixed point theorems for implicit contractions in ordered quasi-b-metric spaces. Moreover, some examples and an application to integral equations are given here to illustrate the usability of the obtained results.
La investigación sobre comportamiento animal en España: un análisis bibliométrico de los artículos publicados entre 1970 y 1989
1996
In this paper we analyze the research conducted by Spanish scientists in the last decades in the field of animal behavior. With this objective in mind we have constructed a database composed of 614 scientific papers published between 1970 and 1989 in 182 referred national and international journals. Analysis of this data base by means of bibliometric techniques provides information concerning trend s in the publication of scientific papers, journals and languages chosen for publication of research results, researchers and their working centers, and topic s and zoological groups investigated.<br><br>Nuestro objetivo en este artículo es analizar la investigación realizada por los …
Moviments de dispersió en els primats. Variabilitat en els seus patrons i causes
2014
Els moviments de dispersió en els animals representen decisions crucials per als individus, ja que afecten la seua supervivència i èxit reproductiu, a més de ser un component important de la dinàmica poblacional. En aquest article es descriu la variabilitat en els patrons de dispersió en els primats i algunes de les causes, tant últimes com proximals, a les quals respon.
Forehead Patch Size Predicts the Outcome of Male–Male Competition in the Pied Flycatcher
2013
Males of many animal species express ornaments that affect their reproduction opportunities through male–male competition or female mate choice. Such ornaments can, for example, inform conspecifics about the fighting ability, condition or territory ownership of the bearer. Pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) males have a conspicuous white forehead patch that varies greatly in size. We examined whether the white forehead patch is an intrasexually selected trait in a Finnish population. We artificially manipulated forehead patch size to represent two naturally occurring extremes and competed males against each other in the presence of a female. Males with a large forehead patch were more agg…
Physical activity and aerobic fitness show different associations with brain processes underlying anticipatory selective visuospatial attention in ad…
2021
ABSTRACTUnderlying brain processes of exercise-related benefits on executive functions and the specific contribution of physical activity vs. aerobic fitness are poorly understood, especially during adolescence. We explored whether and how physical activity and aerobic fitness are associated with selective attention and the oscillatory dynamics induced by an anticipatory spatial cue. Further, we studied whether the link between physical exercise level and cognitive control in adolescents is mediated by the task-related oscillatory activity. Magnetoencephalographic alpha oscillations during a modified Posner’s cueing paradigm were measured in 59 adolescents (37 females and 22 males, 12 to 17…
Altered EEG Oscillatory Brain Networks During Music-Listening in Major Depression
2021
To examine the electrophysiological underpinnings of the functional networks involved in music listening, previous approaches based on spatial independent component analysis (ICA) have recently been used to ongoing electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). However, those studies focused on healthy subjects, and failed to examine the group-level comparisons during music listening. Here, we combined group-level spatial Fourier ICA with acoustic feature extraction, to enable group comparisons in frequency-specific brain networks of musical feature processing. It was then applied to healthy subjects and subjects with major depressive disorder (MDD). The music-induced oscil…