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Age. --- Horse. --- Horses. --- Instrumental task. --- Learning. --- Memory. --- Sex. --- Sexes. --- Spatial task. --- Task. --- Tasks.

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This paper reviews the reasons why domestic dogs make good models to investigate cognitive processes related to social living and describes experimental approaches that can be adopted to investigate such processes in dogs. Domestic dogs are suitable models for investigating social cognition skills for three broad reasons. First, dogs originated from wolves, social animals that engage in a number of co-operative behaviours, such as hunting and that may have evolved cognitive abilities that help them predict and interpret the actions of other animals. Second, during domestication dogs are likely to have been selected for mental adaptations for their roles in human society such as herding or companionship. Third, domestic dogs live in a human world and "enculturation" may facilitate the development of relevant mental skills in dogs. Studies of social cognition in animals commonly use experimental paradigms originally developed for pre-verbal human infants. Preferential gaze, for example, can be used as a measure of attention or "surprise" in studies using expectancy violation. This approach has been used to demonstrate simple numerical competence in dogs. Dogs also readily use both conspecific and human social signals (e.g. looking or pointing) as information sources to locate hidden rewards such as food or favourite toys. Such abilities make dogs particularly good models for investigating perspective-taking tasks, where animals are required to discriminate between apparently knowledgeable and apparently ignorant informants.

Ability. --- Adaptation. --- Animal. --- Animals. --- Attention. --- Behaviour. --- Canis-familiaris. --- Canis. --- Cognition. --- Cognitive-ability. --- Conspecific. --- Development. --- Discriminate. --- Dog. --- Dogs. --- Domestic dog. --- Domestication. --- Food. --- Human infants. --- Human. --- Hunting. --- Infant. --- Model. --- Models. --- Paper. --- Review. --- Reward. --- Social. --- Task. --- Tasks. --- Toy. --- Wolf. --- Wolves.

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During aging, reductions in hippocampal neurogenesis are associated with memory decline indicating a causal relationship. Indeed, insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a major activator of the extracellular receptor kinase pathway that is central in learning and memory processes, is also a key modulator of hippocampal neurogenesis. Previously, we showed that age-related declines in spatial memory tasks can be improved by antioxidant-rich diets containing blueberries. In this study, to begin to understand the mechanisms responsible for the beneficial effects of blueberries, we assessed changes in hippocampal plasticity parameters such as hippocampal neurogenesis, extracellular receptor kinase activation, and IGF-1 and IGF-1R levels in blueberry-supplemented aged animals. Our results show that all these parameters of hippocampal neuronal plasticity are increased in supplemented animals and aspects such as proliferation, extracellular receptor kinase activation and IGF-1 and IGF-1R levels correlate with improvements in spatial memory. Therefore, cognitive improvements afforded by polyphenolic-rich fruits such as blueberries appear, in part, to be mediated by their effects on hippocampal plasticity

Activation. --- Adult dentate gyrus. --- Aged rats. --- Aging. --- Alzheimers-disease. --- Animal. --- Animals. --- Antioxidants. --- Behavior. --- Cognition. --- Diet. --- Dietary supplementation. --- Environmental enrichment. --- Erk. --- Growth-factor-i. --- Growth. --- Hippocampal neurogenesis. --- Hippocampal. --- Human. --- Igf-1. --- Learning and memory. --- Learning. --- Level. --- Mechanisms. --- Medial prefrontal cortex. --- Memory. --- Modulation. --- Neurogenesis. --- Neuronal signal-transduction. --- Neuronal. --- Parameters. --- Plasticity. --- Rat. --- Rats. --- Receptor. --- Reduction. --- Spatial memory. --- Spatial. --- Task. --- Tasks. --- Time. --- Vitamin-e. --- Water maze.

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The mesocortical and mesolimbic dopaminergic (DAergic) pathways are activated by either aversive or rewarding stimuli. The functional tone of these DAergic neurons also increases during the execution of cognitive tasks. The present study was designed to examine the relationship between mesocortical and mesolimbic DAergic function and the expression of fear-related behaviours as compared with attention- and cognition-related mechanisms (e.g. coping strategies), in response to aversive conditions. To this aim, we used two psychogenetically selected rat lines, Roman high-avoidance (RHA/Verh) and Roman low-avoidance (RLA/Verh), which display drastically different emotion- and coping-related behaviours in response to stressors: RLA/Verh rats are 'reactive copers' and more fearful than RHA/Verh rats, which are 'proactive copers'. Brain dialysis experiments demonstrated that tail-pinch (TP) and the anxiogenic compounds pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) and ZK 93426 increased DA output in the medial prefrontal cortex (PFCX) of RHA/Verh but not RLA/Verh, rats. In contrast, in the shell compartment of the nucleus accumbens (NAC shell), TP caused a small increase in DA output only in RLA/Verh rats, whereas PTZ and ZK 93426 had no significant effect on either line. RHA/Verh rats displayed more robust and longer lasting coping activity and less frequent freezing and self-grooming episodes than did RLA/Verh rats after TP, PTZ or ZK 93426. This dissociation between fear-related behaviour and cortical DAergic activation argues against the view that the latter may be involved in the control of fear-like responses. We therefore propose that the activation of mesocortical DAergic projections by aversive stimuli underlies the cognitive mechanisms that are triggered in an attempt to gain control over the stressor.

Accumbens. --- Activation. --- Activity. --- Attention. --- Behaviour. --- Brain. --- Control. --- Coping strategies. --- Coping strategy. --- Coping. --- Cortex. --- Dopamine. --- Emotion. --- Experiment. --- Experiments. --- Expression. --- Function. --- Increase. --- Increases. --- Mechanisms. --- Medial prefrontal cortex. --- Neurons. --- Nucleus accumbens. --- Nucleus-accumbens. --- Nucleus. --- Pentylenetetrazol. --- Prefrontal cortex. --- Projections. --- Rat. --- Rats. --- Release. --- Response. --- Responses. --- Roman high-avoidance. --- Stimuli. --- Strategies. --- Strategy. --- Stressor. --- Stressors. --- Task. --- Tasks.

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The present experiments investigated the role of the prelimbic-infralimbic areas in behavioral flexibility using a place-response learning paradigm. All rats received a bilateral cannula implant aimed at the prelimbic-infralimbic areas. To examine the role of the prelimbic-infralimbic areas in shifting strategies, rats were tested on a place and a response discrimination in a cross-maze. Some rats were tested on the place version first followed by the response version. The procedure for the other rats was reversed. Infusions of 2% tetracaine into the prelimbic-infralimbic areas did not impair acquisition of the place or response discriminations. Prelimbic-infralimbic inactivation did impair learning when rats were switched from one discrimination to the other (cross-modal shift). To investigate the role of the prelimbic-infralimbic areas in intramodal shifts (reversal learning), one group of rats was tested on a place reversal and another group tested on a response reversal. Prelimbic-infralimbic inactivation did not impair place or response intramodal shifts. Some rats that completed testing on a particular version in the cross-modal and intramodal experiments were tested on the same version in a new room for 3 d. The transfer tests revealed that rats use a spatial strategy on the place version and an egocentric response strategy on the response version. Overall, these results suggest that the prelimbic-infralimbic areas are important for behavioral flexibility involving crossmodal but not intramodal shifts

Acquisition. --- Animal-models. --- Anterior cingulate. --- Area. --- Attentional set shifting. --- Cannula. --- Caudate-nucleus. --- City. --- Cortex. --- Discrimination. --- Double dissociation. --- Electrolytic lesions. --- Experiment. --- Experiments. --- Flexibility. --- Group. --- Hippocampal. --- Infralimbic. --- Involvement. --- Learning. --- Prefrontal cortex. --- Prelimbic. --- Rat. --- Rats. --- Response. --- Reversal learning. --- Rodent. --- Spatial. --- Strategies. --- Strategy. --- Tasks. --- Test. --- Tests. --- Tetracaine. --- Working-memory.