Control system for hunger and its implications in animals and man

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Frustrations of fur-farmed mink

Captive animals may suffer if strongly motivated to perform activities that their housing does not allow. We investigated this experimentally for caged mink, and found that they would pay high costs to perform a range of natural behaviours, and release cortisol if their most preferred activity, swimming, was prevented. Investigates the effect of limitations on caged mink. Popularity of fur farming; Research into the possible deprivation of mink, which result in their frustration; Details of the experiment; Impact of an access to water; Results which indicate that fur-farmed mink are still motivated to perform the same activities as their wild counterpart

Accommodative dynamics and attention: the influence of manipulating attentional capacity on accommodative lag and variability

Purpose: There is evidence that attention can modulate ocular dynamics, but its effects on accommodative dynamics have yet to be fully determined. We investigated the effects of manipulating the capacity to focus on task-relevant stimuli, using two levels of dual-tasking (arithmetic task) and auditory feedback, on the accommodative dynamics at three different target distances (500, 40 and 20 cm). Methods: The magnitude and variability of the accommodative response were objectively measured in 20 healthy young adults using the Grand Seiko WAM-5500 autorefractor. In randomised order, participants fixated on a Maltese cross while 1) performing an arithmetic task with two levels of complexity (low and high mental load); 2) being provided with two levels of auditory feedback (low and high feedback); and 3) without performing any mental task or receiving feedback (control). Accommodative and pupil dynamics were monitored for 90 seconds during each of the 15 trials (5 experimental conditions x 3 target distances). Results: The lag of accommodation was sensitive to the attentional state (p = 0.001), where a lower lag of accommodation was observed for the high feedback condition compared to the control (corrected p-value = 0.009). The imposition of mental load while fixating on a distant target led to a greater accommodative response (corrected p-value = 0.010), but no effects were found for the near targets. There was a main effect of the experimental manipulation on the accommodative variability (p < 0.001), with the use of auditory feedback improving the accuracy of the accommodative system. Conclusions: Our data show that accommodative dynamics is affected by varying the capacity to focus on task-relevant stimuli, observing an improvement in accommodative stability and response with auditory feedback. These results highlight an association between attention and ocular dynamics and provide new insight into the control of accommodation

Hedonic Quality or Reward? A Study of Basic Pleasure in Homeostasis and Decision Making of a Motivated Autonomous Robot

© The Author (s) 2016. Published by SAGE. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).We present a robot architecture and experiments to investigate some of the roles that pleasure plays in the decision making (action selection) process of an autonomous robot that must survive in its environment. We have conducted three sets of experiments to assess the effect of different types of pleasure---related versus unrelated to the satisfaction of physiological needs---under different environmental circumstances. Our results indicate that pleasure, including pleasure unrelated to need satisfaction, has value for homeostatic management in terms of improved viability and increased flexibility in adaptive behavior.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

A framework for resolving motivational conflict via attractor dynamics

Motivation modulates behaviour depending upon contextual and internal cues. Like animals, successful artificial agents must implement different behavioural strategies in order to satisfy dynamical needs. Such causal factors emerge from internal homeostatic or allostatic processes, as well as from external stimuli or threats. However, when two or more needs coalesce, a situation of motivational conflict ensues. In this work we present a four-stage dynamical framework for the resolution of motivational conflict based upon principles from dynamical systems and statistical mechanics. As a central mechanism for the resolution of conflict we propose the use of potentials with multiple wells or minima. This model leads to behavioural switching either by means of a bifurcation or by the stochastic escape from one of the wells. We present analytical and simulation results that reproduce known motivational conflict phenomena observed in the study of animal behaviour, in the case of two conflicting motivations

Disgust trumps lust:women’s disgust and attraction towards men is unaffected by sexual arousal

Mating is a double-edged sword. It can have great adaptive benefits, but also high costs, depending on the mate. Disgust is an avoidance reaction that serves the function of discouraging costly mating decisions, for example if the risk of pathogen transmission is high. It should, however, be temporarily inhibited in order to enable potentially adaptive mating. We therefore tested the hypothesis that sexual arousal inhibits disgust if a partner is attractive, but not if he is unattractive or shows signs of disease. In an online experiment, women rated their disgust towards anticipated behaviors with men depicted on photographs. Participants did so in a sexually aroused state and in a control state. The faces varied in attractiveness and the presence of disease cues (blemishes). We found that disease cues and attractiveness, but not sexual arousal, influenced disgust. The results suggest that women feel disgust at sexual contact with unattractive or diseased men independently of their sexual arousal

Assessing learning and memory in pigs

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in (mini) pigs (Sus scrofa) as species for cognitive research. A major reason for this is their physiological and anatomical similarity with humans. For example, pigs possess a well-developed, large brain. Assessment of the learning and memory functions of pigs is not only relevant to human research but also to animal welfare, given the nature of current farming practices and the demands they make on animal health and behavior. In this article, we review studies of pig cognition, focusing on the underlying processes and mechanisms, with a view to identifying. Our goal is to aid the selection of appropriate cognitive tasks for research into pig cognition. To this end, we formulated several basic criteria for pig cognition tests and then applied these criteria and knowledge about pig-specific sensorimotor abilities and behavior to evaluate the merits, drawbacks, and limitations of the different types of tests used to date. While behavioral studies using (mini) pigs have shown that this species can perform learning and memory tasks, and much has been learned about pig cognition, results have not been replicated or proven replicable because of the lack of validated, translational behavioral paradigms that are specially suited to tap specific aspects of pig cognition. We identified several promising types of tasks for use in studies of pig cognition, such as versatile spatial free-choice type tasks that allow the simultaneous measurement of several behavioral domains. The use of appropriate tasks will facilitate the collection of reliable and valid data on pig cognition