DOT 5

• This explains how network activity across multiple brain regions is related to a particular cognitive task. This approach is referred to as the study of functional connectivity (FC).
• The task of characterizing the FC associated with each behavior and cognitive process is known as the study of the functional connectome.
• Species-common behaviors are those displayed by virtually all members of a species, or at least by all those of the same age and sex.
• In the open-field test, the subject is placed in a large, barren chamber, and its activity is recorded.
• rats that rarely venture away from the walls of the test chamber and rarely engage in such activities as rearing and grooming.

  thigmotaxic
• Typical patterns of aggressive and defensive behavior can be observed and measured during combative encounters between the dominant male rat of an established colony and a smaller male intruder

  colony-intruder paradigm
• a four-armed, plus-sign shaped maze typically mounted 50 centimeters above the floor, is a test of defensiveness commonly used to study the anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing) effects of drugs.

  elevated plus maze
• she sticks her hindquarters in the air, she bends her back in a U, and she deflects her tail to the side.

  lordosis
• During some mounts, the male inserts his penis into the female’s vagina; this act is called intromission.
• After intromission, the male dismounts by jumping backward. He then returns a few seconds later to mount and intromit once again. Following about 10 such cycles of mounting, intromitting, and dismounting, the male mounts, intromits, and ejaculates.
• The most common measure of female rat sexual behavior is the lordosis quotient.
• Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, the experimenter pairs an initially neutral stimulus called a conditional stimulus (e.g., a tone or a light) with an unconditional stimulus (e.g., meat powder)—a stimulus that elicits an unconditional (reflexive) response (e.g., salivation).
• In the operant conditioning paradigm, the rate at which a particular voluntary response (such as a lever press) is emitted is increased by reinforcement or decreased by punishment.
• self-stimulation paradigm, animals press a lever to deliver electrical stimulation to particular sites in their own brains; those structures in the brain that support self-stimulation have often been called pleasure centers.
• conditioned taste aversion is the avoidance response that develops to tastes of food whose consumption has been followed by illness
• radial arm maze (see Figure 5.23) is an array of arms—usually eight or more—radiating from a central starting area.
• Morris water maze (Morris, 1981). The rats are placed in a circular, featureless pool of cool milky water in which they must swim until they discover the escape platform—which is invisible just beneath the surface of the water.
• conditioned defensive burying, rats receive a single aversive stimulus (e.g., a shock, air blast, or noxious odor) from an object mounted on the wall of the chamber just above the floor, which is littered with bedding material.