Rotating panoramic view: interaction between visual and olfactory cues in ants.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Minoura M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4736924 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundEven on short routes, ants can be guided by multiple visual memories. We investigate here the cues controlling memory retrieval as wood ants approach a one- or two-edged landmark to collect sucrose at a point along its base. In such tasks, ants store the desired retinal position of landmark edges at several points along their route. They guide subsequent trips by retrieving the appropriate memory and moving to bring the edges in the scene toward the stored positions.ResultsThe apparent width of the landmark turns out to be a powerful cue for retrieving the desired retinal position of a landmark edge. Two other potential cues, the landmark's apparent height and the distance that the ant walks, have little effect on memory retrieval. A simple model encapsulates these conclusions and reproduces the ants' routes in several conditions. According to this model, the ant stores a look-up table. Each entry contains the apparent width of the landmark and the desired retinal position of vertical edges. The currently perceived width provides an index for retrieving the associated stored edge positions. The model accounts for the population behavior of ants and the idiosyncratic training routes of individual ants.DiscussionOur results imply binding between the edge of a shape and its width and, further, imply that assessing the width of a shape does not depend on the presence of any particular local feature, such as a landmark edge. This property makes the ant's retrieval and guidance system relatively robust to edge occlusions.
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Project description:For humans, like other social animals, behaviour acts as a first line of defence against pathogens. A key component is the ability to detect subtle perceptual cues of sick conspecifics. The present study assessed the effects of endotoxin-induced olfactory and visual sickness cues on liking, as well as potential involved mechanisms. Seventy-seven participants were exposed to sick and healthy facial pictures and body odours from the same individual in a 2 × 2 factorial design while disgust-related facial electromyography (EMG) was recorded. Following exposure, participants rated their liking of the person presented. In another session, participants also answered questionnaires on perceived vulnerability to disease, disgust sensitivity and health anxiety. Lower ratings of liking were linked to both facial and body odour disease cues as main effects. Disgust, as measured by EMG, did not seem to be the mediating mechanism, but participants who perceived themselves as more prone to disgust, and as more vulnerable to disease, liked presented persons less irrespectively of their health status. Concluding, olfactory and visual sickness cues that appear already a few hours after the experimental induction of systemic inflammation have implications for human sociality and may as such be a part of a behavioural defence against disease. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Olfactory communication in humans'.
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Project description:To elucidate the aging-associated cellular population dynamics throughout the body, here we present PanSci, a single-cell transcriptome atlas profiling over 20 million cells from 623 mouse tissue samples, encompassing a range of organs across different developmental stages, genders, and genotypes. This comprehensive dataset allowed us to identify more than 3,000 unique cellular states and catalog over 200 distinct aging-associated cell populations experiencing significant depletion or expansion. Our panoramic analysis uncovered four distinct, temporally structured aging-related cell population dynamic waves that are organ- and lineage-specific. Moreover, we investigated aging-associated alterations in immune cell populations, revealing both widespread shifts and organ-specific changes. We further explored the regulatory roles of the immune system on aging and pinpointed specific age-related cell population expansions that are lymphocyte-dependent. The breadth and depth of our 'cell-omics' methodology not only enhance our comprehension of cellular aging but also lay the groundwork for exploring the complex regulatory networks among varied cell types in the context of aging and aging-associated diseases.
2024-03-05 | GSE247719 | GEO
Project description:Successful reproduction is a fundamental physiological process that relies on the integration of sensory cues of attraction with appropriate emotions and behaviors and the reproductive axis. However, the factors responsible for this integration remain largely unexplored. Using functional neuroimaging, hormonal, and psychometric analyses, we demonstrate that the reproductive hormone kisspeptin enhances brain activity in response to olfactory and visual cues of attraction in men. Furthermore, the brain regions enhanced by kisspeptin correspond to areas within the olfactory and limbic systems that govern sexual behavior and perception of beauty as well as overlap with its endogenous expression pattern. Of key functional and behavioral significance, we observed that kisspeptin was most effective in men with lower sexual quality-of-life scores. As such, our results reveal a previously undescribed attraction pathway in humans activated by kisspeptin and identify kisspeptin signaling as a new therapeutic target for related reproductive and psychosexual disorders.
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Project description:How do we explore the visual environment around us, and how are head and eye movements coordinated during our exploration? To investigate this question, we had observers look at omnidirectional panoramic scenes, composed of both landscape and fractal images, using a virtual reality viewer while their eye and head movements were tracked. We analyzed the spatial distribution of eye fixations and the distribution of saccade directions and the spatial distribution of head positions and the distribution of head shifts, as well as the relation between eye and head movements. The results show that, for landscape scenes, eye and head behavior best fit the allocentric frame defined by the scene horizon, especially when head tilt (i.e., head rotation around the view axis) is considered. For fractal scenes, which have an isotropic texture, eye and head movements were executed primarily along the cardinal directions in world coordinates. The results also show that eye and head movements are closely linked in space and time in a complementary way, with stimulus-driven eye movements predominantly leading the head movements. Our study is the first to systematically examine eye and head movements in a panoramic virtual reality environment, and the results demonstrate that a virtual reality environment constitutes a powerful and informative research alternative to traditional methods for investigating looking behavior.
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Project description:RationaleHow the smell of alcohol impacts alcohol-related thoughts and behaviours is unclear, though it is well-documented that alcohol-related stimuli and environments may trigger these.ObjectivesThe current study, therefore, aimed to investigate the priming effects of both visual and olfactory alcohol cues on inhibitory control.MethodForty individuals (M age?=?23.65, SD?=?6.52) completed a go/no-go association task (GNAT) which measured reaction times, response accuracy and false alarm rates whilst being exposed to alcohol-related (or neutral) olfactory and visual cues.ResultsAlcohol-related visual cues elicited lower false alarm rates, slower reaction times and higher accuracy rates relative to neutral pictorial cues. False alarm rates were significantly higher for those exposed to alcohol as opposed to neutral olfactory cues.ConclusionsBy highlighting that exposure to alcohol-related olfactory cues may impede response inhibition, the results indicate that exposure to such stimuli may contribute to the activation of cognitive responses which may drive consumption.
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Project description:Butterflies use multiple signals, including visual, olfactory and tactile cues, to identify same- and opposite-sex individuals during courtship. In this study of the sexually dimorphic butterfly Cethosia cyane cyane, we explored the roles of visual and olfactory cues in conspecific mate recognition during courtship. Our results showed that males took the initiative in actively chasing females during courtship using only visual cues. Males could distinguish the gender of conspecifics using visual cues alone. The size and color of the wings differ significantly between the sexes. Behavioral assays showed that males visually recognized females not by wing size, but by their sexually specific wing color. The movement pattern of the model also exerted some influence on male courtship chasing behavior. A total of 21 volatiles were detected in the bodies of adults, but only cedrol played a role in the process of male recognition of females at close range. Therefore, males rely on both visual and olfactory cues to distinguish females during courtship. Visual cues play a major role in attracting males at the beginning of the courtship chase, while olfactory cues play a role in accurately identifying partners at close range.
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Project description:The visual systems of animals have to provide information to guide behaviour and the informational requirements of an animal's behavioural repertoire are often reflected in its sensory system. For insects, this is often evident in the optical array of the compound eye. One behaviour that insects share with many animals is the use of learnt visual information for navigation. As ants are expert visual navigators it may be that their vision is optimised for navigation. Here we take a computational approach in asking how the details of the optical array influence the informational content of scenes used in simple view matching strategies for orientation. We find that robust orientation is best achieved with low-resolution visual information and a large field of view, similar to the optical properties seen for many ant species. A lower resolution allows for a trade-off between specificity and generalisation for stored views. Additionally, our simulations show that orientation performance increases if different portions of the visual field are considered as discrete visual sensors, each giving an independent directional estimate. This suggests that ants might benefit by processing information from their two eyes independently.
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Project description:To gain a molecular understanding of kidney functions, we established a high-resolution map of gene expression patterns in the human kidney. The glomerulus and seven different nephron segments were isolated by microdissection from fresh tissue specimens, and their transcriptome was characterized by using the serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) method. More than 400,000 mRNA SAGE tags were sequenced, making it possible to detect in each structure transcripts present at 18 copies per cell with a 95% confidence level. Expression of genes responsible for nephron transport and permeability properties was evidenced through transcripts for 119 solute carriers, 84 channels, 43 ion-transport ATPases, and 12 claudins. Searching for differences between the transcriptomes, we found 998 transcripts greatly varying in abundance from one nephron portion to another. Clustering analysis of these transcripts evidenced different extents of similarity between the nephron portions. Approximately 75% of the differentially distributed transcripts corresponded to cDNAs of known or unknown function that are accurately mapped in the human genome. This systematic large-scale analysis of individual structures of a complex human tissue reveals sets of genes underlying the function of well-defined nephron portions. It also provides quantitative expression data for a variety of genes mutated in hereditary diseases and helps in sorting candidate genes for renal diseases that affect specific portions of the human nephron.
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