PRELIMINARY DATA ON SOME BEHAVIORAL CHANGES INDUCED BY SHORT-TERM INTRAPERITONEAL OXYTOCIN ADMINISTRATION IN AGED RATS

Introduction: Oxytocin (OT) is a well-known neuropeptides which together with vasopressin, melatonin, insulin and other hormones can alter both behavior and physiological or neuronal functions. This growing interest on OT roles is also based on the demonstrated beneficial effects as a stress reliever and a social bonding agent. The association between old age and OT was only vaguely studied. Little or few is known on the effect of the OT hormone on the old body. Hereby, we present our preliminary results in the research on behavioral changes regarding the intraperitoneal administration of OT in aged rats. Subjects and methods: OT was administered for 8 days in Wistar aged rats in parallel with saline administration for control group. Behavioral markers were assessed in some specific behavioral tasks, such as the Y-Maze test for short-term working memory, Open Field test, Elevated Plus Maze, and Forced Swim test for anxious and depressive behavior assessment, and Three-chambered Maze test for sociability assessment. Results: Increased mobility and decreased anxiety behaviors were reported for the aged intraperitoneal OT-treated animals, as compared with controls, during FST and OFT, and respectively FST, EPM, and OFT. Also, decreased depressive-like behaviors were observed in the same animal group during FST and ST. Moreover, a decrease in anxiolytic behavior was observed as exposed to stressful stimuli (such as grooming behavior in OFT, and forced grooming behavior in ST), and as exposed to social stimuli (such as grooming behavior in TCT). Similarly, significant differences were obtained regarding the social behavior of the intraperitoneal OT-treated animal as compared to control group, the animals showing increased sociability and social preference for the stranger animal in TCT. However, no significant effects on the working memory (assessed as spontaneous alternation in YMT) were observed. Conclusions: Intraperitoneal administration of OT in aged rats has clear effects on anxious and depressive behavior, but no significant effects on the working memory. Also, several beneficial effects of OT on social preferences and sociability were observed

MuSe 2020 challenge and workshop: multimodal sentiment analysis, emotion-target engagement and trustworthiness detection in real-life media: emotional car reviews in-the-wild

ABSTRACT Multimodal Sentiment Analysis in Real-life Media (MuSe) 2020 is a Challenge-based Workshop focusing on the tasks of sentiment recognition, as well as emotion-target engagement and trustworthiness detection by means of more comprehensively integrating the audio-visual and language modalities. The purpose of MuSe 2020 is to bring together communities from different disciplines; mainly, the audio-visual emotion recognition community (signal-based), and the sentiment analysis community (symbol-based). We present three distinct sub-challenges: MuSe-Wild, which focuses on continuous emotion (arousal and valence) prediction; MuSe-Topic, in which participants recognise 10 domain-specific topics as the target of 3-class (low, medium, high) emotions; and MuSe-Trust, in which the novel aspect of trustworthiness is to be predicted. In this paper, we provide detailed information on MuSe-CAR, the first of its kind in-the-wild database, which is utilised for the challenge, as well as the state-of-the-art features and modelling approaches applied. For each sub-challenge, a competitive baseline for participants is set; namely, on test we report for MuSe-Wild a combined (valence and arousal) CCC of .2568, for MuSe-Topic a score (computed as 0.34 * UAR + 0.66 * F1) of 76.78 % on the 10-class topic and 40.64 % on the 3-class emotion prediction, and for MuSe-Trust a CCC of .4359.Funding from the EP- SRC Grant No. 2021037, and the Bavarian State Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts in the framework of the Centre Digitisation.Bavaria (ZD.B). We thank the sponsors of the Challenge BMW Group and audEERING

NAA: A multimodal database of negative affect and aggression

We present the collection and annotation of a multi-modal database with negative human-human interactions. The work is part of supporting behavior recognition in the context of a virtual reality aggression prevention training system. The data consist of dyadic interactions between professional aggression training actors (actors) and naive participants (students). In addition to audio and video, we have recorded motion capture data with kinect, head tracking, and physiological data: Heart rate (ECG), galvanic skin response (GSR) and electromyography (EMG) of biceps, triceps and trapezius muscles. Aggression levels, fear, valence, arousal and dominance have been rated separately for actors and students. We observe higher inter-rater agreement for rating the actors than for rating the students, consistently for each annotated dimension, and a higher inter-rater agreement for speaking behavior than for listening behavior. The data can be used among others for research on affect recognition, multimodal fusion and the relation between different bodily manifestation

NAA:A multimodal database of negative affect and aggression

We present the collection and annotation of a multi-modal database with negative human-human interactions. The work is part of supporting behavior recognition in the context of a virtual reality aggression prevention training system. The data consist of dyadic interactions between professional aggression training actors (actors) and naive participants (students). In addition to audio and video, we have recorded motion capture data with kinect, head tracking, and physiological data: Heart rate (ECG), galvanic skin response (GSR) and electromyography (EMG) of biceps, triceps and trapezius muscles. Aggression levels, fear, valence, arousal and dominance have been rated separately for actors and students. We observe higher inter-rater agreement for rating the actors than for rating the students, consistently for each annotated dimension, and a higher inter-rater agreement for speaking behavior than for listening behavior. The data can be used among others for research on affect recognition, multimodal fusion and the relation between different bodily manifestation

PAIN MANIFESTATIONS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA - CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ASPECTS IN HUMAN PATIENTS AND ANIMAL MODELS

Pain is a subjective phenomenon, not fully understood, which is manifesting abnormally in most of the disorders. Also, in the case of schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder marked by gross distortion from reality, disturbances in thinking, feeling and behavior, pain behaves in an unpredictable manner, just like the evolution of this mental disorder. In this way, findings on this matter are contradictory, some pleading for decreased pain perception in schizophrenia, others for increased pain sensitivity, while there are also reports stating no differences between healthy controls and schizophrenic patients. Still, it is now generally accepted that pain perception is impaired in various ways in schizophrenics. Nevertheless, pain is a very important clinical issue in this population that needs to be clarified. Throughout this paper, we are going to review these contradictory information regarding pain manifestations in the context of schizophrenia in both human patients and animal models, emphasizing the importance of determining pain mechanism, its particularities and evolution in the context of schizophrenic disease, so that this phenomenon could be evaluated, quantified and controlled with the intention of obtaining a superior management for this disorder and to possibly raise hopes of higher life quality and expectancy in patients suffering from schizophrenia. Also, we would like to raise awareness on this matter, making psychiatrists, general practitioners, and other medical specialists more conscious of the importance of this problem, so that medical care could improve for these patients in the future

Oxytocin Differentiated Effects According to the Administration Route in a Prenatal Valproic Acid-Induced Rat Model of Autism

Background and objectives: The hormone oxytocin (OXT) has already been reported in both human and animal studies for its promising therapeutic potential in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the comparative effectiveness of various administration routes, whether central or peripheral has been insufficiently studied. In the present study, we examined the effects of intranasal (IN) vs. intraperitoneal (IP) oxytocin in a valproic-acid (VPA) autistic rat model, focusing on cognitive and mood behavioral disturbances, gastrointestinal transit and central oxidative stress status. Materials and Methods: VPA prenatally-exposed rats (500 mg/kg; age 90 days) in small groups of 5 (n = 20 total) were given OXT by IP injection (10 mg/kg) for 8 days consecutively or by an adapted IN pipetting protocol (12 IU/kg, 20 μL/day) for 4 consecutive days. Behavioral tests were performed during the last three days of OXT treatment, and OXT was administrated 20 minutes before each behavioral testing for each rat. Biochemical determination of oxidative stress markers in the temporal area included superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and malondialdehyde (MDA). A brief quantitative assessment of fecal discharge over a period of 24 hours was performed at the end of the OXT treatment to determine differences in intestinal transit. Results: OXT improved behavioral and oxidative stress status in both routes of administration, but IN treatment had significantly better outcome in improving short-term memory, alleviating depressive manifestations and mitigating lipid peroxidation in the temporal lobes. Significant correlations were also found between behavioral parameters and oxidative stress status in rats after OXT administration. The quantitative evaluation of the gastrointestinal (GI) transit indicated lower fecal pellet counts in the VPA group and homogenous average values for the control and both OXT treated groups. Conclusions: The data from the present study suggest OXT IN administration to be more efficient than IP injections in alleviating autistic cognitive and mood dysfunctions in a VPA-induced rat model. OXT effects on the cognitive and mood behavior of autistic rats may be associated with its effects on oxidative stress. Additionally, present results provide preliminary evidence that OXT may have a balancing effect on gastrointestinal motility

Date preliminare privind unele manifestări ale durerii într-un model de șobolan MPTP-indus a bolii Parkinson

Parkinson's disease (PD) is less known as a disease causing pain syndromes, although pain is found in 40-80 % of PD patients, as described by the very few reports in this area of research. Moreover, in some PD patients, pain is so severe and intractable that it overshadows the motor symptoms of the disorder. Still, pain in PD frequently goes under acknowledged and undertreated. Also, the studies regarding pain perception in the existing animal models of PD are very few. We experimentally induced the PD model in rats by injecting subcutaneously one dose of 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP), 20mg/kg, while the control group received saline. The behavioral testing for pain included the hot-plate task and was performed 7 days after MPTP injection. In this way, our rat model resulted from the acute treatment with a low dose of MPTP, exhibited an increased sensitivity to pain perception, as demonstrated by the significant decrease in the values of the latency time in hot-plate for rats treated with MPTP, as compared to the controls. In this way, further studies in this area of research seem warranted

Evaluation of Performance, Nitrogen Metabolism and Tissue Composition in Barrows Fed an n-3 PUFA-Rich Diet

We investigated changes in nitrogen metabolism and chemical, fatty acid (FA) and amino acid (AA) composition in tissues (longissimus dorsi (LD) and semitendinosus (ST) muscles, heart, spleen, liver and cecum) following the dietary addition of extruded linseed and walnut meal (50:50 mix). Plasma creatinine and urea nitrogen were determined as well. Two trials were designed using barrows (five replicates) allotted in two groups [(control, (SM) and experimental, (LEW))] in metabolic cages. The experimental diet rich in n-3 FA led to a significant increase of retained nitrogen (>8.09% in the LEW group). The biological value of feed protein was 14.8% higher in the LEW group than in the SM group. LD muscles from the SM group and liver from the LEW group had greater nitrogen contents, whereas the heart and spleen had lower concentrations of nitrogen in the LEW group. Diet had a pronounced effect on n-3 FA, particularly on α-linolenic fatty acid (ALA) (p < 0.0001). The highest levels of ALA were recorded in the cecum (>6.06 times in LEW) and heart (>5.44 times in LEW). The highest level of lysine was noticed in the LD muscle (>2.1% in SM). An n-3-rich diet significantly reduced the amount of nitrogen excreted; greater than 40% nitrogen was retained, thus improving the meat composition