Behavioral Neurobiology Commons^™

Cortical Representation Of Lateralized Grasping In Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes): A Combined Mri And Pet Study, William D. Hopkins, Jared P. Taglialatela, Jamie L. Russell, Talia M. Nir, Jennifer Schaeffer

Faculty Articles

Functional imaging studies in humans have localized the motor-hand region to a neuroanatomical landmark call the KNOB within the precentral gyrus. It has also been reported that the KNOB is larger in the hemisphere contralateral to an individual's preferred hand, and therefore may represent the neural substrate for handedness. The KNOB has also been neuronatomically described in chimpanzees and other great apes and is similarly associated with handedness. However, whether the chimpanzee KNOB represents the hand region is unclear from the extant literature. Here, we used PET to quantify neural metabolic activity in chimpanzees when engaged in unilateral reach-and-grasping responses …

Seasonal Hippocampal Plasticity In Food-Storing Birds., David F Sherry, Jennifer S Hoshooley

Psychology Publications

Both food-storing behaviour and the hippocampus change annually in food-storing birds. Food storing increases substantially in autumn and winter in chickadees and tits, jays and nutcrackers and nuthatches. The total size of the chickadee hippocampus increases in autumn and winter as does the rate of hippocampal neurogenesis. The hippocampus is necessary for accurate cache retrieval in food-storing birds and is much larger in food-storing birds than in non-storing passerines. It therefore seems probable that seasonal change in caching and seasonal change in the hippocampus are causally related. The peak in recruitment of new neurons into the hippocampus occurs before birds …

The Parallel Worm Tracker: A Platform For Measuring Average Speed And Drug-Induced Paralysis In Nematodes, Daniel Ramot, Brandon E. Johnson, Tommie L. Berry Jr., Lucinda Carnell, Miriam B. Goodman

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Background

Caenorhabditis elegans locomotion is a simple behavior that has been widely used to dissect genetic components of behavior, synaptic transmission, and muscle function. Many of the paradigms that have been created to study C. elegans locomotion rely on qualitative experimenter observation. Here we report the implementation of an automated tracking system developed to quantify the locomotion of multiple individual worms in parallel.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Our tracking system generates a consistent measurement of locomotion that allows direct comparison of results across experiments and experimenters and provides a standard method to share data between laboratories. The tracker utilizes a video camera …

In Situ Muscle Power Differs Without Varying In Vitro Mechanical Properties In Two Insect Leg Muscles Innervated By The Same Motor Neuron, Anna N. Ahn, Kenneth Meijer, Robert J. Full

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

The mechanical behavior of muscle during locomotion is often predicted by its anatomy, kinematics, activation pattern and contractile properties. The neuromuscular design of the cockroach leg provides a model system to examine these assumptions, because a single motor neuron innervates two extensor muscles operating at a single joint. Comparisons of the in situ measurements under in vivo running conditions of muscle 178 to a previously examined muscle (179) demonstrate that the same inputs (e.g. neural signal and kinematics) can result in different mechanical outputs. The same neural signal and kinematics, as determined during running, can result in different mechanical functions, …

Law And Biology: Toward An Integrated Model Of Human Behavior, Owen D. Jones

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

As first year law students unhappily discover, the meaning of "law" is frustratingly protean, shifting by usage and user. Depending on whom you ask, law is a system of rules, a body of precedents, a legislative enactment, a collection of norms, a process by which social goals are pursued, or some dynamic mixture of these. Law's principal purpose is to define and protect individual rights, to ensure public order, to resolve disputes, to redistribute wealth, to dispense justice, to prevent or compensate for injury, to optimize economic efficiency, or perhaps to do something else. And yet one thing is irreducibly …