Can young chimpanzees learn a new behaviour by observing their human caregiver?

The relationship between the interaction of two individuals and the transmission of knowledge and skills from one to another is called "master-apprenticeship"; through repetitive observation of the master (i.e., mother), the apprentice (i.e., infant) acquires a skill that was not part of his behavioural repertoire before. Over a period of 5 years, infant chimpanzees develop and, under natural conditions, they use their mother as a model for acquiring new behaviours and habits. In captivity, hand-reared chimpanzees form a strong bond with their human caregiver who represents a substitute of their natural mother. We investigated whether hand-reared young chimpanzees would learn a new behaviour, namely the leaf swallowing behaviour, by observing their "human mother" performing it. Four hand-reared young chimps housed at Parco Natura Viva, I, were allowed to observe for ten times their caregiver swallowing the leaves of a plant species similar to one chimpanzees naturally use in the wild. At the beginning of the study, all the subjects played with the plant without paying attention to it or interacting with its leaves. However, during the experimental sessions, all the subjects showed the leaf swallowing behaviour at least twice. When they witnessed the leaf swallowing behaviour from their keeper, they started to interact with the leaves and to display this behaviour. These results suggest that hand-reared young chimpanzees can learn new behaviours by observing their human surrogate mother. Furthermore, this study moves a step forward towards the comprehension of how the leaf swallowing behaviour is acquired in the wild, suggesting that it is acquired socially

Evaluating the suitability of postnuclear supernatants as in vitro models for assessing cadmium- and other xenobiotic-induced neurotoxicity on crucial enzymatic parameters

No abstract available

Medication reviews and deprescribing as a single intervention in falls prevention: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: our aim was to assess the effectiveness of medication review and deprescribing interventions as a single intervention in falls prevention. Methods: Design: systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources: Medline, Embase, Cochrane CENTRAL, PsycINFO until 28 March 2022. Eligibility criteria: randomised controlled trials of older participants comparing any medication review or deprescribing intervention with usual care and reporting falls as an outcome. Study records: title/abstract and full-text screening by two reviewers. Risk of bias: Cochrane Collaboration revised tool. Data synthesis: results reported separately for different settings and sufficiently comparable studies meta-analysed. Results: forty-nine heterogeneous studies were included. Community: meta-analyses of medication reviews resulted in a risk ratio (RR) of 1.05 (95% confidence interval, 0.85-1.29, I2 = 0%, 3 studies(s)) for number of fallers, in an RR = 0.95 (0.70-1.27, I2 = 37%, 3 s) for number of injurious fallers and in a rate ratio (RaR) of 0.89 (0.69-1.14, I2 = 0%, 2 s) for injurious falls. Hospital: meta-analyses assessing medication reviews resulted in an RR = 0.97 (0.74-1.28, I2 = 15%, 2 s) and in an RR = 0.50 (0.07-3.50, I2 = 72% %, 2 s) for number of fallers after and during admission, respectively. Long-term care: meta-analyses investigating medication reviews or deprescribing plans resulted in an RR = 0.86 (0.72-1.02, I2 = 0%, 5 s) for number of fallers and in an RaR = 0.93 (0.64-1.35, I2 = 92%, 7 s) for number of falls. Conclusions: the heterogeneity of the interventions precluded us to estimate the exact effect of medication review and deprescribing as a single intervention. For future studies, more comparability is warranted. These interventions should not be implemented as a stand-alone strategy in falls prevention but included in multimodal strategies due to the multifactorial nature of falls. PROSPERO registration number: CRD4202021823

Registro Nascite, Rapporto Tecnico Attività Anno 2012

Vauthey Max, Vauthey Paul. Chronique céramique. In: Revue archéologique du Centre de la France, tome 17, fascicule 1-2, 1978. pp. 123-124