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PubMed1993

European isolation and confinement study. Ethological analysis of spatial behavior.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate through an ethological approach the behavioral consequences of confinement and isolation in the restricted space of a hyperbaric chamber at low pressure on six subjects for a period of 28 days. The quantitative analysis consisted in tracing the use of space, minute by minute (i.e., groupings of positions and displacement trajectories) and counting the motor activity (i.e., collateral acts) of the crew members while performing various tasks (meeting, preparing dinner, dinner, leisure time) within the main chamber as a function of the time spent in confinement (days 2, 9, 19, 28). The data reveal a change in the timing of collective tasks in the course of the experiment, a dispersal of the social group during the middle period, and a stability of the spatial behavior at the beginning and at the end of the isolation period. Other behavioral strategies observed are the necessity of body mobility in a reduced space, the decrease of an intimate space as defined by Hall, with the predominance of a social space first and a personal space later with increasing time of confinement. Consequently, the crew members appear to adapt by means of these behavioral strategies. In that way, the reduction in the number of collateral activities can be taken as an index of the adaptation of the subjects to these extreme conditions.

Group Processes↗
PubMed1996

Spatial, behavioral and sensory correlates of hippocampal CA1 complex spike cell activity: implications for information processing functions.

The aim of this review is to better understand hippocampal function drawing almost entirely from single unit recording studies of pyramidal cells in areas CA1 and CA3 of behaving animals. Hippocampal location-selectivity ("place cell activity") as well as place-independent behavioral correlates and sensory-triggered discharges are demonstrated to have common features: (1) abstraction, that is, development within the hippocampal circuit of novel, cue-invariant supramodal representations; (2) varying degrees of generalization or specificity; (3) capacity for abrupt changes in discharge correlates of individual neurons as the animal changes its behavior pattern or its environment changes dramatically; (4) though individual neurons discharge when the subject occupies a certain place, or performs a certain behavior, the ensemble of hippocampal neurons comprehensively represent the whole environment and all behaviors required for the task at hand. A concordance is proposed: hippocampal neuronal discharge correlates represent elements partitioned from information abstracted along one or more systems of categorization or "information domains": the physical structure of the environment, regularities in the behavioral exigencies of the current situation. (Sensory stimuli can be considered as temporally varying features of the environment) Location-selectivity and behavioral correlates are extreme cases, and mixed correlates occur. The hippocampus is proposed to carry out several fundamental processes that transform information: abstraction, partitioning and recombination, that is, formation of conjunctive associations between events. Simultaneously activated neurons could then promote extrahippocampal associations linking together the diverse brain regions at the origin of these signals.

Animals↗
PubMed1997

Correlation between head direction cell activity and spatial behavior on a radial arm maze.

This study assessed the activity of head direction (HD) cells during performance of a spatial reference memory task on a radial arm maze. Rats were trained to select a maze arm located in a constant position in relation to a salient extramaze visual landmark. HD cell discharge properties remained relatively stable across task acquisition in most rats. Following acquisition, rotation of the landmark by 90 degrees or 180 degrees usually led to a corresponding shift in the maze arm selected and the HD cell's preferred firing direction. When the cell's preferred direction did not shift, rats usually selected the wrong arm. HD cell activity was not influenced by the rat's approach to the goal, reward consumption, or exit from the reward area. This demonstration of landmark control over behavior and the cell's preferred direction supports the hypothesis that HD cells contribute to an absolute representation of the environment that can be used to guide spatial behavior.

Animals↗
PubMed2006

Toward a formal theory of flexible spatial behavior: geometric category biases generalize across pointing and verbal response types.

Three experiments tested whether geometric biases--biases away from perceived reference axes--reported in spatial recall tasks with pointing responses generalized to a recognition task that required a verbal response. Seven-year-olds and adults remembered the location of a dot within a rectangle and then either reproduced its location or verbally selected a matching choice dot from a set of colored options. Results demonstrated that geometric biases generalized to verbal responses; however, the spatial span of the choice set influenced performance as well. These data suggest that the same spatial memory process gives rise to both response types in this task. Simulations of a dynamic field model buttress this claim. More generally, these results challenge accounts that posit separate spatial systems for motor and verbal responses.

Adult↗
PubMed1996

Changes in open field behavior, spatial memory, and hippocampal parvalbumin immunoreactivity following enrichment in rats exposed to neonatal anoxia.

Behavioral and neurochemical changes following enriched housing were studied in Wistar rats neonatally exposed to anoxia (100% N2 for 25 min at approximately 30 h after birth) or to sham treatment. Neonatal anoxia provoked transient hyperactivity during the P25-P40 period, and spatial memory disturbances persisting into adult life. Enriched housing, from P21, at weaning, to P60, improved behavior in open field and spatial memory abilities in a water maze, reducing the deficits that followed neonatal anoxia. Changes in the expression of the calcium binding protein parvalbumin were present in the CA1, CA3, and DG regions of the hippocampus in both sham-treated and anoxic rats exposed to enrichment. The present findings give further support to the evidence of a positive effect of enriched housing on behavior and learning of normal and lesioned animals, which is sustained by modifications in the neuronal activity, and suggest that modifications in the environment can be useful to counteract the development of some neurological disturbances that follow neonatal insults, e.g., perinatal asphyxia.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Relationships among childhood sex-atypical behavior, spatial ability, handedness, and sexual orientation in men.

Moderate support was obtained in a sample of 101 gay, bisexual, and heterosexual males for the perinatal hormone theory, which hypothesizes that attenuated levels of androgens during critical periods of male fetal development fail to masculinize and defeminize the brain. Affected individuals develop female-typical sexual orientation (assessed here by a pie chart) and cerebral organization, reflected in visual-spatial abilities and gender nonconformity. Handedness, also thought to reflect in utero hormone exposure, was evaluated. Gay and bisexual males reported greater femininity and lesser masculinity than heterosexuals, with bisexuals intermediate in masculinity, suggesting a common biological mediator for homoeroticism and sex atypicality. Among bisexual males, increased masculinity was related to enhanced performance on all spatial tasks. Group mean differences in spatial ability and handedness were not found; however, among bisexuals, poorer visual-spatial performance predicted increased homoeroticism and right-handedness positively correlated with all spatial tasks. If perinatal hormones contribute to a generalized feminization of the brain, the current data indicate that it is most apparent among bisexual males. Sexing of their brains may involve several sexually dimorphic regions that are related in a continuous manner. Inferred cerebral feminization was more circumscribed among gay and heterosexual males, for whom childhood sex atypicality was most highly-distinguishing. Unspecified mechanisms responsible for homoeroticism in them may differ from those that produce same-sex attractions in bisexuals and thus have relatively little impact on other components of cerebral feminization.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Alternation behavior, spatial discrimination, and reversal disturbances following 6-hydroxydopamine lesions in the nucleus accumbens of the rat.

The effects of dopaminergic depletion of the nucleus accumbens was tested in various behavioral tasks such as alternation, spatial discrimination, and reversal learning, and in an extinction paradigm in a T maze. Animals with lesions showed impairment of spontaneous alternation behavior, disturbances in the acquisition of spatial discrimination, and great difficulty in reversing previously learned habits. In the extinction phase, experimental animals are unable to adjust their behavior, and continue to choose the previously reinforced arm of the T maze. It is suggested that the nucleus accumbens plays an important role in the transition of motivation into action, and that dopamine has a facilitatory influence on the mediation of these processes.

Animals↗
PubMed1998

What do comparative studies of inbred mice add to current investigations on the neural basis of spatial behaviors?

In the present article a number of comparative lesion studies in two inbred strains of mice (C57BL/6 and DBA/2) with different levels of radial maze performance are reviewed. The effects of lesions in several brain areas on maze learning were investigated, thus revealing strain differences in the neural circuitry subserving spatial cognition. Results showed that the hippocampus and parietal cortex appear to be involved in the control of radial maze learning in both C57 and DBA mice, although in a strain-dependent fashion. Lesions in other structures such as the medial frontal cortex and the amygdala only affected spatial learning in the C57 strain. Lastly, the results showed some improvement in radial maze performance in DBA mice with nucleus accumbens lesions. The data highlight the variability in the neural mechanisms subserving well-differentiated levels of spatial performance. The contribution of inbred mice to our general understanding of the neural basis of spatial cognition is discussed.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Spatial behavior of anomalous transport.

We present a general derivation of one-dimensional spatial concentration distributions for anomalous transport regimes. Such transport can be captured in the framework of a continuous time random walk with a broad transition time distribution. This general theory includes a Fokker-Planck equation as a particular limiting case. All of the concentration profiles, as well as the associated temporal first passage time distributions, can be written in terms of a single special function (that belongs to the class of Fox functions). In addition, we consider the first two moments of the spatial concentration distributions, and determine not only their scaling behavior with time but also the coefficients and correction terms.

Journal Article↗