Behavioral Evidence Research Articles

Dahuang-Wumei decoction protects against hepatic encephalopathy in mice: Behavioural, biochemical, and molecular evidence

BackgroundDisturbance of the blood‒brain barrier (BBB) and associated inflammatory responses are observed in patients with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) and can cause long-term complications. Dahuang-Wumei decoction (DWD) is a renowned traditional Chinese herbal medicine with a long history of clinical use and has been widely employed as an effective treatment for hepatic encephalopathy (HE). Despite its established efficacy, the precise mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effects of DWD have not been fully elucidated. PurposeThe present study aimed to comprehensively explore the potential effects and underlying molecular mechanisms of DWD on HE through an integrated investigation that included both in vivo and in vitro experiments. MethodsIn the present study, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) and thioacetamide (TAA) were used to establish an HE model in mice. The therapeutic effects of DWD on liver injury, fibrosis, brain injury, behaviour, and consciousness disorders were evaluated in vivo. C8-D1A and bEnd.3 cells were used to construct a BBB model in vitro. The effects of DWD on proinflammatory factor expression, BBB damage and the Wnt/β-catenin pathway were detected in vivo and in vitro. ResultsOur results showed that DWD can improve liver injury and fibrosis and brain damage and inhibit neurofunctional and behavioural disorders in mice with HE. Afterwards, we found that DWD decreased the levels of proinflammatory factors and suppressed BBB disruption by increasing the levels of junction proteins in vivo and vitro. Further studies verified that the Wnt/β-catenin pathway may play a pivotal role in mediating the inhibitory effect of DWD on HE. ConclusionThese results demonstrated that DWD can treat HE by preventing BBB disruption, and the underlying mechanisms involved were associated with the activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and the inhibition of inflammatory responses.

Evidence of ferromagnetic behaviour in carbon nanospheres synthesised by the chemical vapour deposition technique

The magnetic and electrical properties of two different sets of carbon nanospheres synthesised by chemical vapour deposition were investigated, using a state-of-the-art Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS). Scanning electron microscopy imaging of the carbon nanospheres revealed a difference in size with a diameters distribution of approximately 200–400 nm and 400–500 nm. PPMS magnetic measurements of the 400–500 nm diameter carbon nanospheres exhibited diamagnetism at high temperatures and clear superparamagnetic behaviour at very low temperatures (<10 K). However, ferromagnetism was observed in carbon nanospheres of diameter < 400 nm. The results obtained from both inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and Mössbauer spectroscopy, and as well as the calculated saturation magnetisation indicate that the observed ferromagnetism in the carbon nanospheres of diameter < 400 nm is intrinsic and could not be accounted for by the magnetic impurities such as Fe and Ni introduced during the synthesis process. The electrical properties of a network of carbon nanospheres were investigated and showed a variable range hopping class of conductivity.

First Evidence of SET-Like Behavior of 3-D NAND Flash Cells in the Deep-Cryogenic Regime

First Evidence of SET-Like Behavior of 3-D NAND Flash Cells in the Deep-Cryogenic Regime

Superior Attentional Efficiency of Auditory Cue via the Ventral Auditory-thalamic Pathway.

Auditory commands are often executed more efficiently than visual commands. However, empirical evidence on the underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms remains scarce. In two experiments, we manipulated the delivery modality of informative cues and the prediction violation effect and found consistently enhanced RT benefits for the matched auditory cues compared with the matched visual cues. At the neural level, when the bottom-up perceptual input matched the prior prediction induced by the auditory cue, the auditory-thalamic pathway was significantly activated. Moreover, the stronger the auditory-thalamic connectivity, the higher the behavioral benefits of the matched auditory cue. When the bottom-up input violated the prior prediction induced by the auditory cue, the ventral auditory pathway was specifically involved. Moreover, the stronger the ventral auditory-prefrontal connectivity, the larger the behavioral costs caused by the violation of the auditory cue. In addition, the dorsal frontoparietal network showed a supramodal function in reacting to the violation of informative cues irrespective of the delivery modality of the cue. Taken together, the results reveal novel behavioral and neural evidence that the superior efficiency of the auditory cue is twofold: The auditory-thalamic pathway is associated with improvements in task performance when the bottom-up input matches the auditory cue, whereas the ventral auditory-prefrontal pathway is involved when the auditory cue is violated.

Cognitive and neural mechanisms of voluntary versus forced language switching in Chinese-English bilinguals: an fMRI study.

The ecological validity of bilingual code-switching has garnered increasing attention in recent years. Contrary to traditional studies that have focused on forced language switching, emerging theories posit that voluntary switching may not incur such a cost. To test these claims and understand differences between forced and voluntary switching, the present study conducted a systematic comparison through both behavioral and neural perspectives. Utilizing fMRI alongside picture-naming tasks, our findings diverge from prior work. Voluntary language switching not only demonstrated switching costs at the behavioral level but also significantly activated brain regions associated with inhibitory control. Direct comparisons of voluntary and forced language switching revealed no significant behavioral differences in switching costs, and both shared several common brain regions that were activated. On the other hand, a nuanced difference between the two types of language switching was revealed by whole-brain analysis: voluntary switching engaged fewer language control regions than forced switching. These findings offer a comprehensive view of the neural and behavioral dynamics involved in bilingual language switching, challenging prior claims that voluntary switching imposes no behavioral or neural costs, and thus providing behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for the involvement of inhibitory control in voluntary language switching.

Parafoveal and foveal N400 effects in natural reading: A timeline of semantic processing from fixation-related potentials.

The depth at which parafoveal words are processed during reading is an ongoing topic of debate. Recent studies using RSVP-with-flanker paradigms have shown that implausible words within sentences elicit an N400 component while they are still in parafoveal vision, suggesting that the semantics of parafoveal words can be accessed to rapidly update the sentence representation. To study this effect in natural reading, we combined the coregistration of eye movements and EEG with the deconvolution modeling of fixation-related potentials (FRPs) to test whether semantic plausibility is processed parafoveally during Chinese sentence reading. For one target word per sentence, both its parafoveal and foveal plausibility were orthogonally manipulated using the boundary paradigm. Consistent with previous eye movement studies, we observed a delayed effect of parafoveal plausibility on fixation durations that only emerged on the foveal word. Crucially, in FRPs aligned to the pretarget fixation, a clear N400 effect emerged already based on parafoveal plausibility, with more negative voltages for implausible previews. Once participants fixated the target, we again observed an N400 effect of foveal plausibility. Interestingly, this foveal N400 was absent whenever the preview had been implausible, indicating that when a word's (im)plausibility is already processed in parafoveal vision, this information is not revised anymore upon direct fixation. Implausible words also elicited a late positive component (LPC), but exclusively when in foveal vision. Our results not only provide convergent neural and behavioral evidence for the parafoveal uptake of semantic information, but also indicate different contributions of parafoveal versus foveal information toward higher level sentence processing.

The Green Infrastructure of Sandy Coastlines: A Nature-Based Solution for Mitigation of Climate Change Risks

Natural coastal landforms such as sand dunes and sandy beaches have been proposed as green infrastructure that can reduce climate change risks along coastlines. As such, they can offer a nature-based solution to rising sea levels, increased storminess and wave erosion associated with climate change. However, these proposed advantages are not always based on a sound understanding of coastal sediment system dynamics or tested against field evidence of coastal morphodynamic behavior. This study critically examines the basis of the claim for coastal landforms as green infrastructure, by considering how and in what ways these landforms provide resilience against ongoing climate change along sandy coasts, and proposes a theoretical framework for understanding this relationship. The analysis highlights that natural coastal landforms do not always have properties that provide resilience against future climate change. They can only be considered as offering nature-based solutions against climate change when their pre-existing morphodynamic behavior is fully understood. Thus, not all coastal landforms can be considered as ‘green infrastructure’ and the resilience offered by them against climate change forcing may vary from one place or context to another. This should be considered when using landforms such as sandy beaches and sand dunes as nature-based solutions for coastal management purposes. A 10-step framework is proposed, guiding coastal managers on how such green infrastructure can be used to mitigate climate change risks along coasts.

In search of animal normativity: a framework for studying social norms in non-human animals.

Social norms - rules governing which behaviours are deemed appropriate or inappropriate within a given community - are typically taken to be uniquely human. Recently, this position has been challenged by a number of philosophers, cognitive scientists, and ethologists, who have suggested that social norms may also be found in certain non-human animal communities. Such claims have elicited considerable scepticism from norm cognition researchers, who doubt that any non-human animals possess the psychological capacities necessary for normative cognition. However, there is little agreement among these researchers about what these psychological prerequisites are. This makes empirical study of animal social norms difficult, since it is not clear what we are looking for and thus what should count as behavioural evidence for the presence (or absence) of social norms in animals. To break this impasse, we offer an approach that moves beyond contested psychological criteria for social norms. This approach is inspired by the animal culture research program, which has made a similar shift away from heavily psychological definitions of 'culture' to become organised around a cluster of more empirically tractable concepts of culture. Here, we propose an analogous set of constructs built around the core notion of a normative regularity, which we define as a socially maintained pattern of behavioural conformity within a community. We suggest methods for studying potential normative regularities in wild and captive primates. We also discuss the broader scientific and philosophical implications of this research program with respect to questions of human uniqueness, animal welfare and conservation.

Information seeking behavior on hepatitis B virus, and its associated factors among pregnant women at teaching and specialized hospitals, Northwest Ethiopia: A cross-sectional study.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection continues to be a major public health issue worldwide. Health information-seeking behavior is critical to obtain information about health, diseases such as the Hepatitis B virus, health risks, and health promotion and it has become a major concern of health policymakers. However, there is little evidence of information-seeking behavior on the Hepatitis B virus in Ethiopia. So, this study aimed to assess Hepatitis B virus information-seeking behavior and its associated factors among pregnant women at teaching and Specialized Hospitals, in Northwest Ethiopia. An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among pregnant women at teaching and specialized hospitals, in Northwest Ethiopia from May 01 to June 01, 2022. A total of 423 participants were selected using a systematic random sampling method. The data was collected through an interview-administered questionnaire by kobo-collect software. Then export into SPSS version 20 for analysis. Descriptive statistics, bi-variable, and multivariable logistic regression analyses were done to identify factors associated with Hepatitis B virus information-seeking behavior. The proportion of information-seeking behavior on the Hepatitis B virus among pregnant women was 40.5% (CI = 35.7, 45.6). Education(diploma and above) [AOR = 3.3, 95% CI (1.31, 8.16)], more than one ANC visit [AOR = 5.99, 95% CI (3.20, 12.31)], smart-phone ownership [AOR = 4.1, 95%CI (1.35, 12.31)], internet access [AOR = 5.1, 95%CI (1.35, 15.60)], perceived susceptibility [AOR = 2.7, 95%CI (1.38, 5.31)], perceived severity [AOR = 3.7, 95%CI (2.06, 6.55)], and self-efficacy [AOR = 1.9, 95%CI (1.03, 3.73)] were factors influencing information seeking on Hepatitis B virus. The overall proportion of information-seeking behavior on HBV among pregnant women was low. To improve information-seeking behavior on HBV among pregnant women we should connect the women to the internet and technology. Creating women's awareness about the Hepatitis B virus severity and their venerability and increasing their antenatal care (ANC) visits, self-efficacy, internet access, and women's education can improve information seeking about the Hepatitis B virus.

Neural and behavioral evidence for oxytocin’s facilitatory effects on learning in volatile and stable environments

Outcomes of past decisions profoundly shape our behavior. However, choice-outcome associations can become volatile and adaption to such changes is of importance. The present study combines pharmaco-electroencephalography with computational modeling to examine whether intranasal oxytocin can modulate reinforcement learning under a volatile vs. a stable association. Results show that oxytocin increases choice accuracy independent of learning context, which is paralleled by a larger N2pc and a smaller P300. Model-based analyses reveal that while oxytocin promotes learning by accelerating value update of outcomes in the volatile context, in the stable context it does so by improving choice consistency. These findings suggest that oxytocin’s facilitatory effects on learning may be exerted via improving early attentional selection and late neural processing efficiency, although at the computational level oxytocin’s actions are highly adaptive between learning contexts. Our findings provide proof of concept for oxytocin’s therapeutic potential in mental disorders with adaptive learning dysfunction.

Fraudsters target the elderly: Behavioural evidence from randomised controlled scam-baiting experiments

Email-based fraud is a lucrative market for cybercriminals to scam a wide range of potential victims. Yet there is a sometimes conflicted literature on who these victims are, complicated by low and possibly confounded reporting rates. We make use of an experimental automated scam-baiting platform to test hypotheses about the characteristics online fraudsters find more attractive, gathering behavioural evidence directly from the fraudsters themselves (n = 296). In our comparison of four instrumented ‘personalities’ designed based on traits highlighted in the literature and in a small public perception survey, we find that a script adopting the personality of an elderly woman attracts significantly more engagement from scammers than our control measure. We discuss our approach and the possible interpretations and implications of our findings.

Economic Policy Uncertainty and Equity Fund Flows to India: A Bayesian Approach

We compare the impacts of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU)-related shocks on equity fund flows (EFFs) to India using a Bayesian vector autoregression approach. We find that (a) Indian EPU and GEPU are strongly and negatively related to EFF; (b) EFF are more sensitive to GEPU relative to Indian EPU; (c) evidence of trend-chasing behaviour by fund managers in India; and (d) GEPU is an important factor for forecasting returns on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Taken together, our findings indicate that EPU is important to understanding equity allocation decisions and returns in India. JEL Codes: F21, F39, G11

Evaluating the Presence of Disgust in Animals.

The emotion of disgust in humans is widely considered to represent a continuation of the disease-avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals. The extent to which analogs of human disgust are evident in nonhuman animals, however, remains unclear. The scant research explicitly investigating disgust in animals has predominantly focused on great apes and suggests that disgust might be present in a highly muted form. In this review, we outline the main approaches to disgust. We then briefly discuss disease-avoidance behavior in nonhuman animals, proposing a set of criteria against which evidence for the presence or absence of disgust in animals can be evaluated. The resultant decision tree takes into account other plausible causes of avoidance and aversion when evaluating whether it is likely that the behavior represents disgust. We apply this decision tree to evaluate evidence of disgust-like behavior (e.g., avoidance of carrion and avoidance of feces-contaminated food) in several examples, including nonhuman great apes. Finally, we consider the large disparity between disgust in humans compared to muted disgust in other great apes, examining the possibility that heightened disgust in humans is a relatively recent cultural acquisition.

A treetop diner: camera trapping reveals novel arboreal foraging by fishing cats on colonial nesting birds in Bangladesh

Abstract Based on camera trap images, we document active foraging attempts on nests of colonial waterbirds by a fishing cat Prionailurus viverrinus. The nests were built in the canopy of an 8-m-tall Indian Oak tree Barringtonia acutangula in the Haor Basin region, northeast Bangladesh. In 2022, two events of fishing cats reaching nests with fledglings were documented. In one event, the cat killed four fledglings. The species primarily follows a piscivorous diet and is evolutionarily adapted for semi-aquatic hunting niches. These records provide the first known evidence of the arboreal hunting behaviour observed in the fishing cat.

Heterogeneities of the perceptual-motor style during locomotion at height.

In a recent review, we summarized the characteristics of perceptual-motor style in humans. Style can vary from individual to individual, task to task and pathology to pathology, as sensorimotor transformations demonstrate considerable adaptability and plasticity. Although the behavioral evidence for individual styles is substantial, much remains to be done to understand the neural and mechanical substrates of inter-individual differences in sensorimotor performance. In this study, we aimed to investigate the modulation of perceptual-motor style during locomotion at height in 16 persons with no history of fear of heights or acrophobia. We used an inexpensive virtual reality (VR) video game. In this VR game, Richie's Plank, the person progresses on a narrow plank placed between two buildings at the height of the 30th floor. Our first finding was that the static markers (head, trunk and limb configurations relative to the gravitational vertical) and some dynamic markers (jerk, root mean square, sample entropy and two-thirds power law at head, trunk and limb level) we had previously identified to define perceptual motor style during locomotion could account for fear modulation during VR play. Our second surprising result was the heterogeneity of this modulation in the 16 young, healthy individuals exposed to moving at a height. Finally, 56% of participants showed a persistent change in at least one variable of their skeletal configuration and 61% in one variable of their dynamic control during ground locomotion after exposure to height.

Preexposure to one social threat alters responses to another social threat: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence.

A recent Cyberball study has indicated that the experience of loss of control can affect how people process subsequent social exclusion. This "preexposure effect" supports the idea of a common cognitive system involved in the processing of different types of social threats. To test the validity of this assumption in the current study, we reversed the sequence of the preexposure setup. We measured the effects of social exclusion on the subsequent processing of loss of control utilizing event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and self-reports. In the control group (CG, n = 26), the transition to loss of control elicited significant increases in both the P3 amplitude and the self-reported negative mood. Replicating the results of the previous preexposure study, these effects were significantly reduced by the preexposure to an independent social threat (here: social exclusion). In contrast to previous findings, these effects were not modulated by the discontinuation (EG1disc, n = 25) or continuation (EG2cont, n = 24) of the preexposure threat. Given that the P3 effect is related to the violation of subjective expectations, these results support the notion that preexposure to a specific social threat has widespread effects on the individuals' expectancy of upcoming social participation and control.

Behavioural evidence for enhanced olfactory and trigeminal perception in congenital hearing loss.

Sensory deprivation, especially hearing loss (HL), offers a valuable model for studying neuroplasticity in the human brain and adaptive behaviours that support the daily lives of those with limited or absent sensory input. The study of olfactory function is particularly important as it is an understudied aspect of sensory deprivation. This study aimed to compare the effects of congenital HL on olfactory capacity by using psychophysical tasks. Methodological concerns from previous studies regarding the onset of HL and cognitive assessments were addressed. We recruited 11 individuals with severe-to-profound sensorineural HL (SNHL) since birth and 11 age- and sex-matched typical hearing non-signers. We used standardized neuropsychological tests to assess typical cognition among participants with SNHL. We evaluated olfactory functions by assessing olfactory detection threshold, odour discrimination and odour identification. Hearing-impaired participants outperformed their typical hearing counterparts in olfactory tasks. We further evaluated the accuracy and response time in identifying and localizing odours to disentangle olfactory sensitivity from trigeminal system sensitivity. Participants with SNHL demonstrated higher sensitivity to both the identification and localization tasks. These findings suggest that congenital SNHL is associated with enhanced higher-level olfactory processing and increased trigeminal sensitivity.

Effects of turbidity and habitat complexity on the foraging behavior of the black bullhead (Ameiurus melas)

ABSTRACT The role of vertebrate scavengers in nutrient flow of aquatic ecosystems has recently been emphasized. Evidence is accumulating that scavenging is an alternative tactic for certain predatory fish, but their foraging choices between scavenging and predation under varying environmental conditions have not been studied. In this study, we presented black bullheads, Ameiurus melas (Rafinesque, 1820), with both live and carcass prey of tubenose gobies, Proterorhinus semilunaris (Heckel, 1837), in aquaria with varying levels of turbidity and habitat complexity. Our findings revealed that black bullheads exhibit higher consumption of carcass prey in complex habitat and clear water conditions. We also provide evidence of the active predatory behavior displayed by black bullheads; a greater consumption of live prey was observed in simple habitat and turbid water. We found no relationship between individual exploratory behavior and the choice between carcass and live prey in black bullheads. Our results suggest that the choice between scavenging versus predatory foraging strategy under varying environmental conditions is influenced by the behavior of both consumer and prey. The ability of black bullheads to adapt their foraging strategy in different environments may contribute to their widespread success as an invasive species.

Timed sulfonylurea modulation improves locomotor and sensory dysfunction following spinal cord injury.

Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) results in immediate tissue necrosis and delayed secondary expansion of neurological damage, often resulting in lifelong paralysis, neurosensory dysfunction, and chronic pain. Progressive hemorrhagic necrosis (PHN) and excessive excitation are the main sources of secondary neural injury. Recent approaches to attenuate PHN by glibenclamide can improve locomotor function after SCI. However, use of glibenclamide can exacerbate development of SCI-induced chronic pain by inhibiting KATP channels to increase neuronal excitation and glial activation. In this study, we explored a treatment strategy involving administration of glibenclamide, which suppresses PHN, and diazoxide, which protects against neuronal excitation and inflammation, at different time intervals following spinal cord contusion. Our goal was to determine whether this combined approach enhances both sensory and motor function. Contusive SCI was induced at spinal segment T10 in adult rats. We found that KATP channels opener, diazoxide, decreased the hyperexcitability of primary sensory neurons after SCI by electrophysiology. Timed application of glibenclamide and diazoxide following contusion significantly improved locomotor function and mitigated development of SCI-induced chronic pain, as shown by behavioral evidence. Finally, we found that timed application of glibenclamide and diazoxide attenuates the inflammatory activity in the spinal cord and increases the survival of spinal matters following SCI. These preclinical studies introduce a promising potential treatment strategy to address SCI-induced dysfunction.

The Smart Trust framework for WBAN: An AI-driven approach for node trust assessment

The primary contribution of this research lies in its innovative use of artificial intelligence to automate the trust assessment process in WBANs, providing a dynamic solution to the challenge of maintaining data integrity and network reliability. The SmartTrust (SmTr) framework uses advanced machine learning techniques to accurately analyze historical and behavioral data of network nodes. Thus, computer trustworthiness scores allow one to effectively distinguish between trustworthy nodes and potentially malicious nodes. WBANs and their services are rapidly gaining popularity, but they pose unprecedented security challenges. These requirements are being met with WBAN as it evolves. In an increasingly complex, heterogeneous, and evolving mobile environment, completing these tasks can be difficult. A more secure and adaptable WBAN environment can be achieved by using trust management to meet WBAN security requirements. The reliability of a wireless sensor network is evaluated through behavioral evidence. Researchers use the results of node behavior almost directly or combine them with the results of third-party evaluation, instead of studying the original evidence of node behavior and ignoring the analysis of the history of node behavior, which leads to low confidence, rationality, and reliability. SmartTrust (SmTr) is a new approach based on artificial intelligence (AI) to improve trust and reliability over wireless body area networks (WBAN). As a modern healthcare system, this technology can be considered. Experimental results from implementing the SmTr framework demonstrate its effectiveness in improving network resilience against security threats, improving resource allocation, and thus increasing the quality and reliability of healthcare delivery.