PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Spatial Behavior”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 253 records · Page 14Linked to original sources
PubMed1989

Gender and race differentials in elderly migration.

A number of studies have provided evidence that elderly migration in the United States is strongly selective in terms of the characteristics of the migrants. Such characteristics as age, gender, and race are commonly used in examinations of migrant selectivity, but the differences in spatial behavior of these subpopulations are still poorly understood. This article uses state-to-state migration data, categorized by age, gender, and race, to explore the comparative patterns of origins, destinations, and migration propensities, with a focus on the southeastern states of the country.

Aged↗
PubMed1975

Reacting to autistic children: the danger of trying too hard.

Recent work has revealed that autistic children's predominating tendency to avoid social interactions is actually enhanced by the 'friendly' approaches to others. In this study it was recorded on video-tape how eight autistic children reacted to four styles of adult behaviour. The adult reacted to the child's looks at her by (i) smiling, (ii) gaze averting, (iii) gaze averting plus other 'timid' behaviours and (iv) doing nothing except continuing to look back. For this last condition--when the adult did not react--it was found that autistic children showed less avoidance behaviour after eye contact and spent more time within one metre of the adult. The implications for treatment are contrary to much modern practice and to what seems to be adults' 'natural' response. Reactivity by others appears to enhance the child's avoidance, and it is suggested that adults should be circumspect in the degree of sociability with which they respond to autistic children.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2002

Scaling in nests of a social wasp: a property of the social group.

The numbers of brood cells in nests built by founding swarms of the Neotropical social wasp Polybia occidentalis closely correlate with the numbers of wasps in the swarms. We analyzed nests of different sizes to determine how they scale with respect to the allocation of brood cells among combs. Three patterns were evident: compared to smaller nests, larger nests have (1) more combs and (2) larger combs; and (3) among nests containing the same number of combs, the last two combs diverge in relative size as nest size increases. Taken together, these results suggest that members of a swarm somehow "know" the size of the swarm they are in. This information feeds back to individual builders, which quantitatively modulate their responses to stigmergic cues in ways that result in the nest-size-scaled allocation of brood cells among combs. The patterns also suggest that swarms fine-tune the final size of their nests by making corrections as they build.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

Continuity of affiliative relationships among infants and juveniles in a free-ranging group of Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata).

5 infants were observed during the first 13 mo. after birth in a free-ranging group of Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) to examine whether they maintained relatively frequent affiliative relationships with particular immature individuals. The number of immature affiliative partners rapidly increased from the first 3-mo. period after birth to the second 4-mo. period after birth, and the infants thereafter maintained affiliative relationships with particular individuals, mostly same-aged infants, at least in the second half of their first year. These findings show that infants were likely to interact with a larger number of different animals in the early stage of development, and thereafter selected particular individuals with whom they maintained affiliative relationships. The effects of sex on the selection of these long-term partners are also discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Managing a multicultural radiology staff.

Opportunities for minorities in healthcare increased with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. More recently, funds from the U.S. Public Health Service have been targeted toward disadvantaged minorities. The workforce in healthcare, and in business in general, has become increasingly multicultural. Much of the literature in healthcare management lacks practical guidelines for managing a diverse workforce. Communication, both verbal and nonverbal, and culture are closely intertwined. Managers, as they develop multicultural teams, will need to understand how culture influences communication in their organizations. Space, spatial behavior, and cultural attitudes influence people's behavior. This is a particularly important consideration for a radiology staff, which must often work in close quarters. For some cultural groups, the family as an organization has more significance than even personal, work-related or national causes. People's orientation to time, whether for the past, present or future, is usually related to the culture in which they grew up. Again, this may become an important issue for a radiology administrator whose organization must run punctually and time-efficiently. How patients feel about their environment, whether they believe they are in control or believe in an external locus of control, is of particular interest to those who attempt therapeutic changes in a patient's healthcare. Does the patient believe that illness is divine will or that suffering is intrinsic to the human condition? There is increasing research in the United States to show that people do differ biologically according to race. Such differences exist among patients as well as among staff members. It has been popular to assume that differences among races do not exist. Unfortunately such an attitude does not allow for different attributes and responses of individuals. Managing a multicultural staff presents a challenge to administrators who must be skilled in working with culturally diverse people and must help their staff members do the same.

Cultural Diversity↗
PubMed1999

Optic flow input to the hippocampal formation from the accessory optic system.

Recent studies in rodents have implicated the hippocampal formation in "path integration": the ability to use self-motion cues (ideothesis) to guide spatial behavior. Such models of hippocampal function assume that self-motion information arises from the vestibular system. In the present study we used the retrograde tracer cholera toxin subunit B, the anterograde tracer biotinylated dextran amine, and standard extracellular recording techniques to investigate whether the hippocampal formation [which consists of the hippocampus proper and the area parahippocampalis (Hp/APH) in pigeons] receives information from the accessory optic system (AOS). The AOS is a visual pathway dedicated to the analysis of the "optic flow fields" that result from self-motion. Optic flow constitutes a rich source of ideothetic information that could be used for navigation. Both the nucleus of the basal optic root (nBOR) and nucleus lentiformis mesencephali of the AOS were shown to project to the area ventralis of Tsai (AVT), which in turn was shown to project to the Hp/APH. A smaller direct projection from the nBOR pars dorsalis to the hippocampus was also revealed. During extracellular recording experiments, about half of the cells within the AVT responded to optic flow stimuli. Together these results illustrate that the Hp/APH receives information about self-motion from the AOS. We postulate that this optic flow information is used for path integration. A review of the current literature suggests that an analogous neuronal circuit exists in mammals, but it has simply been overlooked.

Animals↗
PubMed1999

Human evolutionary aspects and urban dwelling features.

Planning and architecture of modern housing projects should take into account the fact that human well-being depends very much on needs derived from the natural history of human evolutionary aspects, which include territoriality, security, and a balance between privacy and communal activity. Although model housing projects should consider space, all to often the need for privacy and the importance of the residential environment has been neglected. Putative consequences are a loss of social coherence, resulting in anonymity, vandalism and an increase in crime rates. On a game theoretical basis, we predict that a tendency for cooperation grows with the increasing probability of future meetings among inhabitants. The higher the probability to re-meet co-residents, the more interactions are to be expected. Frequent meetings lead to reciprocal recognition and enable the inhabitants to control their environment by identifying straners. This mechanism results in the identification with a common territory. Friendly interactions between residents are a motor for and an indicator of satisfactory living conditions. For this study, six different Viennese residential apartment blocks were selected and their quality measured using a checklist. The behavior of the residents was recorded using ethological standard methods (N = 1653), their subjective evaluation was assessed by on-site interviews (N = 300), and the frequency of physical incivilities was counted. The results support the hypotheses. The classification of urban environments relating to the presence of the above-listed features indicates that high habitat quality covaries with differences in preference for the site, extent of friendly interactions and familiarity with other residents, and occurrences of incivilities. One may conclude that the importance of the quality of the habitat environment cannot be overestimated, as its socially integrative potential is a means to counteract anonymity and crime incidence in cities.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

The primate amygdala mediates acute fear but not the behavioral and physiological components of anxious temperament.

Temperamentally anxious individuals can be identified in childhood and are at risk to develop anxiety and depressive disorders. In addition, these individuals tend to have extreme asymmetric right prefrontal brain activity. Although common and clinically important, little is known about the pathophysiology of anxious temperament. Regardless, indirect evidence from rodent studies and difficult to interpret primate studies is used to support the hypothesis that the amygdala plays a central role. In previous studies using rhesus monkeys, we characterized an anxious temperament endophenotype that is associated with excessive anxiety and fear-related responses and increased electrical activity in right frontal brain regions. To examine the role of the amygdala in mediating this endophenotype and other fearful responses, we prepared monkeys with selective fiber sparing ibotenic acid lesions of the amygdala. Unconditioned trait-like anxiety-fear responses remained intact in monkeys with >95% bilateral amygdala destruction. In addition, the lesions did not affect EEG frontal asymmetry. However, acute unconditioned fear responses, such as those elicited by exposure to a snake and to an unfamiliar threatening conspecific were blunted in monkeys with >70% lesions. These findings demonstrate that the primate amygdala is involved in mediating some acute unconditioned fear responses but challenge the notion that the amygdala is the key structure underlying the dispositional behavioral and physiological characteristics of anxious temperament.

Aggression↗
PubMed2001

Hyperactivity and intact hippocampus-dependent learning in mice lacking the M1 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor.

Members of the muscarinic acetylcholine receptor family are thought to play key roles in the regulation of a large number of important functions of the CNS. However, the precise roles of the individual muscarinic receptor subtypes in modulating these processes are not well understood at present, primarily because of the lack of ligands with sufficient receptor subtype selectivity. To investigate the behavioral significance of the M(1) muscarinic receptor (M(1)R), which is abundantly expressed in the forebrain, we subjected M(1) receptor-deficient mice (M(1)R(-/-) mice) to a battery of behavioral tests. M(1)R(-/-) mice showed no significant impairments in neurological reflexes, motor coordination, pain sensitivity, and prepulse inhibition. Strikingly, however, M(1)R(-/-) mice consistently exhibited a pronounced increase in locomotor activity in various tests, including open field, elevated plus maze, and light/dark transition tests. Moreover, M(1)R(-/-) mice showed reduced immobilization in the Porsolt forced swim test and reduced levels of freezing after inescapable footshocks, suggesting that M(1)R(-/-) mice are hyperactive under stressful conditions as well. An increased number of social contacts was observed in a social interaction test. Surprisingly, M(1)R(-/-) mice displayed no significant cognitive impairments in the Morris water maze and in contextual fear conditioning. M(1)R(-/-) mice showed slight performance deficits in auditory-cued fear conditioning and in an eight-arm radial maze, most likely because of the hyperactivity phenotype displayed by the M(1)R(-/-) mice. Our results indicate that M(1) muscarinic receptors play an important role in the regulation of locomotor activity but appear to be less critical for cognitive processes, as generally assumed.

Animals↗
PubMed2001

The effects of bilateral lesions of the amygdala on dyadic social interactions in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

The role of the amygdala in dyadic social interactions of adult rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) was assessed after bilateral ibotenic acid lesions. Social, nonsocial, and spatial behaviors of amygdalectomized and control monkeys were assessed in 3 dyadic experiments: constrained, unconstrained, and round robin. Lesions produced extensive bilateral damage to the amygdala. Across all experiments, the amygdalectomized monkeys demonstrated increased social affiliation, decreased anxiety, and increased confidence compared with control monkeys, particularly during early encounters. Normal subjects also demonstrated increased social affiliation toward the amygdalectomized subjects. These results indicate that amygdala lesions in adult monkeys lead to a decrease in the species-normal reluctance to immediately engage a novel conspecific in social behavior. The altered behavior of the amygdalectomized monkeys may have induced the increased social interactions from their normal companions. This is contrary to the idea that amygdalectomy produces a decrease in social interaction and increased aggression from conspecifics.

Aggression↗
PubMed2002

Diminished anxiety- and depression-related behaviors in mice with selective deletion of the Tac1 gene.

The tachykinin neuropeptide substance P and its receptor neurokinin 1 have been implicated in the regulation of many physiological and pathological processes, including the control of emotional behaviors. The present study examines mice with a targeted deletion of the Tac1 gene, which encodes the neuropeptides substance P and neurokinin A, in animal models relevant to depressive illness and anxiety. In depression-related paradigms, Tac1-deficient mice were more active in the Porsolt's forced-swimming test and the tail-suspension test, and they did not become hyperactive after bulbectomy. Tac1 mutant mice were also less fearful in several animal models of anxiety. They were more active and less affected by the light conditions in the central area of the open-field arena; they showed more social interactions in an aversive environment, they were more active in the open areas of an elevated zero-maze, and they had a reduced latency to feed in the Thatcher-Britton conflict paradigm. These results demonstrate that tachykinins are powerful mediators of depression-like or anxiety-related behaviors in mice. The tachykinin system therefore may play an important role in the regulation of emotional states and the development of anxiety disorders and depression.

Animals↗