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Instincts and emotions
Published in Allan Hobson, Psychodynamic Neurology, 2014
Ethology has made an effective interface with neurobiology, especially in the study of the relatively simple behaviors of relatively simple animals. Thus owl vision, fish courtship displays, and even the social hierarchies of monkeys have been successfully studied in the new field of neuroethology (Schmidt & Konishi, 1998).
Evolution of Brain Mechanisms Controlling Sexual Behavior
Published in Akira Matsumoto, Sexual Differentiation of the Brain, 2017
The primary question addressed in my (D.C.) work concerns how brain mechanisms controlling behavior might evolve. That is, how has the brain come to exploit specific external and internal stimuli so that they serve as triggers for adaptive responses? A basic tenet of neuroethology is that the structures and functions of the central nervous system are adaptational responses to the environment. While we know that the neural mechanisms underlying behavior can be modified by mutation, evolutionary selection pressures, or by hybridization of closely-related species, we know very little about how brain-behavior relationships evolved. This is of considerable interest and fundamental importance to our understanding of the neural control of complex behaviors, but it is difficult to address for three reasons: To demonstrate that microevolutionary changes in the neural mechanisms controlling a specific behavior are a result of selection, it is necessary to establish both that individuals inherently differ in their performance of the behavior, and that these differences in behavior lead to differential reproductive success. Only when these facts have been established can the issue of differences in mechanism be meaningfully addressed.We rarely know the exact phylogenetic relations among the species at hand. Even though closely-related species may be compared, the common ancestor to these species usually no longer exists, and further, there is no way of determining the exact number of intervening species since the original divergence.Behavior-genetic analyses such as screening for mutants or selective breeding reveal the potential for the brain to change in response to artificial selection, not how the brain responds to the selection pressures present in nature.
Maternal reproductive performance and fetal development of the Wistar Audiogenic Rat (WAR) strain
Published in Systems Biology in Reproductive Medicine, 2019
Eduardo H. Umeoka, Matheus C. Eiras, Iara G. Viana, Vanessa S. Giorgi, Aline Bueno, Débora C. Damasceno, Norberto Garcia-Cairasco, Paula A. Navarro
In conclusion, the consistency between data found in Wistar and the results available in the literature supports the comparison between Wistar and WAR. Although Wistar and WAR strains have few differences in their reproductive performance, there are significant differences mainly related to the low weight gain during pregnancy of the WAR animals, which may have adverse consequences for their function in later life (physiological and experimentally controlled challenges) which needs further investigation. Also, data obtained in this study provide a basis for the design of future projects involving embryo manipulation, in vitro fertilization and cryopreservation/vitrification of the WAR strain. The preservation and distribution of this strain to other laboratories around the world is one of the major goals of the Experimental Neuroethology and Neurophysiology Laboratory at the FMRP-USP for the near future, as clearly stated by Garcia-Cairasco et al. (2017).
A brief history of the Australasian Neuroscience Society
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2022
Wickliffe C. Abraham, Laurence B. Geffen, Elspeth M. McLachlan, Linda J. Richards, John A. P. Rostas
Capitalizing on the success of this meeting, the society provided substantial support for collaborations between ANS and the Asia-Pacific Regional Committee (APRC) of IBRO. The first was the IBRO-ANS Advanced Neuroscience School on Neuroethology, which was held before the congress. ANS sent lecturers to the IBRO Associate Schools of Neuroscience run in several countries around the Asia-Pacific region from 2004. These schools, designed for students from several adjacent countries to attend lectures and tutorial sessions and set up networks for the future, have burgeoned in recent years.
‘Necessary and sufficient’ in biology is not necessarily necessary – confusions and erroneous conclusions resulting from misapplied logic in the field of biology, especially neuroscience
Published in Journal of Neurogenetics, 2018
Motojiro Yoshihara, Motoyuki Yoshihara
The unnecessarily ‘rigid’ requirement incurred by Kupfermann and Weiss’s misapplied-N&S logic has led to an awkward situation resembling a ‘witch-hunt’ in the neuroethology field. For example, the necessary condition in misapplied-N&S has mistakenly led to the exclusion of the Mauthner cell from being classified as a command neuron (Eaton, Lee, & Foreman, 2001) although its unique and insightful properties make it an exemplary model system of the sort (Korn & Faber, 2005). Indeed, failure to fulfill the necessary condition of misapplied-N&S has excluded many appropriate command neurons in a similar fashion. Even among animals with simple nervous systems, only two pairs of command neurons (one in a lobster, the other in a sea slug) had been able to fulfill Kupfermann and Weiss’s unnecessarily strict criteria (Frost & Katz, 1996; Meyrand, Simmers, & Moulins, 1991). The feeding command neuron, which we have recently discovered in the brain of fruit flies (Flood, Iguchi, et al., 2013) (see What is the ‘merit’ section) has become only the third one in the world to meet Kupfermann and Weiss’s criteria. While a few pairs of neurons may have passed these unnecessarily rigid criteria, this situation has placed the command neuron concept itself in danger, as the term and its strictness was often avoided altogether. Marder and Calabrese (1996) commented, ‘these criteria were so rigid that the concept has largely been abandoned, and the term command neuron has virtually disappeared from the literature on control of rhythmic motor systems.’ People have started to use other phrases such as ‘higher-order neurons’ (Kupfermann & Weiss, 2001; Marder, Bucher, Schulz, & Taylor, 2005) or ‘command-like neurons’ (Eaton et al., 2001) in order to circumvent the strict definition, but they lack the intuitive diction of the original term. In reality, it was the wrong logic of misapplied-N&S, introduced by Kupfermann and Weiss, that distorted the command neuron concept, which does not have any fault in and of itself.