Cognitive components of color vision in honey bees: how conditioning variables modulate color learning and discrimination

Since the demonstration of color vision in honey bees 100 years ago by Karl von Frisch, appetitive conditioning to color targets has been used as the principal way to access behavioral aspects of bee color vision. Yet, analyses on how conditioning parameters affect color perception remained scarce. Conclusions on bee color vision have often been made without referring them to the experimental context in which they were obtained, and thus presented as absolute facts instead of realizing that subtle variations in conditioning procedures might yield different results. Here, we review evidence showing that color learning and discrimination in bees are not governed by immutable properties of their visual system, but depend on how the insects are trained and thus learn a task. The use of absolute or differential conditioning protocols, the presence of aversive reinforcement in differential conditioning and the degrees of freedom of motor components determine dramatic variations in color discrimination. We, thus, suggest top-down attentional modulation of color vision to explain the changes in color learning and discrimination reviewed here. We discuss the possible neural mechanisms of this modulation and conclude that color vision experiments require a careful consideration of how training parameters shape behavioral responses.     

Individual typological features reflected in different stages of learning and related changes in dopamine transport in the mesolimbic brain

A hypothesis is proposed according to which there is a strong similarity between the individual typological features of animals (humans) and different stages of learning processes. The hypothesis is supported by the results of comparisons of psychophysiological and neurochemical indices of different stages of conditioning and various typologies of higher nervous activity. Such comparisons reveal a high similarity between the generalization phase and impulsivity, the phase a learned conditioned reflex and self-controlled behaviour, and overlearned CR and a state of "psychosis". Functional states close to pathology and possibilities of development and manifestation of several psychotic states depending on psychophysiological and neurochemical organization of learning processes are also considered.     

Comprehensive Longitudinal Study of the Physical and Psychophysiological Development of Schoolchildren at the Preadolescent, Early Adolescent, and Late Adolescent Ontogenetic Stages

Results are presented of a 10-year comprehensive study of the changes in somatic, psychophysiological, and autonomic parameters of 132 students of an innovative school (a linguistics-oriented gymnasium) by using computer-aided psychophysiological and functional diagnostics. Certain changes were found in the development of the structural and functional psychosomatic complexes of students at different stages of their ontogenesis.     

The effect of space—frequency characteristics of the organ of vision on the human psychophysiological state and working capacity

During the long-term stay in closed environment of the orbital space station, it is extremely important that the light conditions and color scheme were favorable for the working capacity of a cosmonaut. The systems of lighting should ensure visual comfort for the crew members under stressful conditions and, in addition, they should appropriate to their health and recovery of functional reserves during the long-duration flight. To solve this task, the distribution of luminosity and chromaticity within a closed space should be taken into account. For better understanding the perception of visual information, we studied the color space-frequency characteristics of the organ of vision (SFC VO). A set of sensors was used to estimate psychophysiological parameters. After preadaptation of an operator, VO contrast sensitivity was measured by determining the thresholds of advent and disappearance of the test objects; this was accompanied by fixation of the time and adaptive brightness. Analysis of the experimental data made it clear that the color contrast sensitivity and directly related SFC of the organ of vision are valuable markers for interrelationships between processing of visual information and psychophysiological state of a human. Note that the color SFC VO not only illustrates deviations but also enables their quantification. Changes in psychophysiological state are accompanied by the appropriate changes in SFC VO, which should be taken into account in developing the neural information technologies used for health recovery and light-and-color control of environment.     

Problem of controls in physiology and pharmacology: Psychophysiological and morphofunctional effects of chronic saline administration

The psychophysiological and morphofunctional effects of chronic administration of saline, which is commonly used as an active control, to Wistar rats were analyzed at different levels. The active control proved to be complicated by signs of stress manifested as increased corticosterone levels, changes in the homeostatic system, blood cytometric indices, morphofunctional states of the thymus and spleen, sharp suppression of the cognitive activity, and decrease in the motivational and locomotor activities. Pain expectation developed in animals after the second saline injection in the tail-flick test—pain sensitivity sharply increased in the session prior to the injection. These signs of stress should be taken into account for interpretation of the effects in drug tests.     

Correlation between the rate of ethanol elimination and the psychophysiological characteristics of rats

Ethanol elimination from the blood of rats with different psychophysiological features was studied using gas chromatographic head-space analysis in the general complex of tests aimed at determination of ethanol consumption. The selection of animals with different levels of the initial alcohol motivation was performed according to modified Porsolt's method. It was shown that the initial level of predisposition to depression-like states is in a dose-dependent correlation with the high rate of ethanol elimination. This is suggested to be one of the genetic indications which promotes the formation of the initial alcohol motivation and the development of experimental alcoholism.     

The psychophysiological cost of intense information load in 5-to 14-year-old children and adolescents

The psychophysiological cost of activity was determined in 5- to 14-year-old children and adolescents (n = 612) by correlating the performance of intense information load with the value of autonomic shifts in the course of the test. It was shown that the psychophysiological cost of information load in the state of functional comfort (self-determined speed) decreased 2.2- to 5.4-fold in the period from 5–6 to 13–14 years of age and the psychophysiological cost of intense intellectual activity with the maximum speed under the conditions of a time deficit (the maximum speed) decreased 1.2- to 4-fold. The greatest changes in the psychophysiological cost of intense intellectual activity were observed at the beginning of regular schooling and during puberty. The data indicate the need for a continuous search for new, efficient, and more physiologically adequate ways of control of the process of training and education taking into consideration the psychophysiological cost of intense academic activity in different periods of ontogeny and ensuring a beneficial effect of educational technologies on the health and development of schoolchildren.     

Asynchronous processing in vision: color leads motion

It has been demonstrated that subjects do not report changes in color and direction of motion as being co-incidental when they occur synchronously. Instead, for the changes to be reported as being synchronous, changes in direction of motion must precede changes in color. To explain this observation, some researchers have suggested that the neural processing of color and motion is asynchronous. This interpretation has been criticized on the basis that processing time may not correlate directly and invariantly with perceived time of occurrence. Here we examine this possibility by making use of the color-contingent motion aftereffect. By correlating color states disproportionately with two directions of motion, we produced and measured color-contingent motion aftereffects as a function of the range of physical correlations. The aftereffects observed are consistent with the perceptual correlation between color and motion being different from the physical correlation. These findings demonstrate asynchronous processing for different stimulus attributes, with color being processed more quickly than motion. This suggests that the time course of perceptual experience correlates directly with that of neural activity.     

螽斯复眼光感受器的生理变化

利用电生理细胞内记录方法,在24小时周期(日间和夜间)内和不同适应(阴适应和暗适应)状态下,持续记录了螽斯复眼侧区小眼小网膜细胞的角灵敏度、光谱灵敏度、偏振光灵敏度、绝对灵敏度和适应变化的时间过程.并对这些结果进行讨论.     

The method for studying of the "magnetic vacuum" effect on color memory in humans

The method for studying the effects of weak magnetic fields and "magnetic vacuum" on the psychophysiological state of a human organism is proposed. This method includes the system of the exposure of a human organism to uniform constant and alternating magnetic fields and the system of computerized psychological tests. The influence of the weakening of constant magnetic field on the psychophysiological state of human organisms was studied. The short-term color memory and reaction rates of 30 subjects have been examined in the local geomagnetic field and in a magnetic field which was reduced in 10 and more times. Statistically significant differences in the color memory test was found in the magnetic field 4 +/- 1 microT in comparison with the results in the geomagnetic field. In the magnetic field 0 +/- 1 microT, slight impairment of color memory was found. Preliminary results in the test of reaction rates showed the tendency to slowing down the reaction rates in the weakened magnetic fields.     

The physiological indices of emotional reactions in the clinical picture of local brain lesions

The psychophysiological correlates of recognition and reproduction of emotional states were studied in patients with differently localized lesions of the brain cortex. It was shown that the effect of different lesions are anisotropic. The cross and reciprocal interaction between the posteriofrontal and temporal regions of the left and right hemispheres was described. A relation was revealed between the emotion sign and different autonomic indices. A quantitative estimation of physiological reactions of healthy persons and patients with focal brain pathology was carried out.     

Dissociable effects of valence and arousal in adaptive executive control

Background

Based on introspectionist, semantic, and psychophysiological experimental frameworks, it has long been assumed that all affective states derive from two independent basic dimensions, valence and arousal. However, until now, no study has investigated whether valence and arousal are also dissociable at the level of affect-related changes in cognitive processing.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We examined how changes in both valence (negative vs. positive) and arousal (low vs. high) influence performance in tasks requiring executive control because recent research indicates that two dissociable cognitive components are involved in the regulation of task performance: amount of current control (i.e., strength of filtering goal-irrelevant signals) and control adaptation (i.e., strength of maintaining current goals over time). Using a visual pop-out distractor task, we found that control is exclusively modulated by arousal because interference by goal-irrelevant signals was largest in high arousal states, independently of valence. By contrast, control adaptation is exclusively modulated by valence because the increase in control after trials in which goal-irrelevant signals were present was largest in negative states, independent of arousal. A Monte Carlo simulation revealed that differential effects of two experimental factors on control and control adaptation can be dissociated if there is no correlation between empirical interference and conflict-driven modulation of interference, which was the case in the present data. Consequently, the observed effects of valence and arousal on adaptive executive control are indeed dissociable.

Conclusions/Significance

These findings indicate that affective influences on cognitive processes can be driven by independent effects of variations in valence and arousal, which may resolve several heterogeneous findings observed in previous studies on affect-cognition interactions.     

A statistical method for identifying differential gene-gene co-expression patterns

MOTIVATION: To understand cancer etiology, it is important to explore molecular changes in cellular processes from normal state to cancerous state. Because genes interact with each other during cellular processes, carcinogenesis related genes may form differential co-expression patterns with other genes in different cell states. In this study, we develop a statistical method for identifying differential gene-gene co-expression patterns in different cell states. RESULTS: For efficient pattern recognition, we extend the traditional F-statistic and obtain an Expected Conditional F-statistic (ECF-statistic), which incorporates statistical information of location and correlation. We also propose a statistical method for data transformation. Our approach is applied to a microarray gene expression dataset for prostate cancer study. For a gene of interest, our method can select other genes that have differential gene-gene co-expression patterns with this gene in different cell states. The 10 most frequently selected genes, include hepsin, GSTP1 and AMACR, which have recently been proposed to be associated with prostate carcinogenesis. However, genes GSTP1 and AMACR cannot be identified by studying differential gene expression alone. By using tumor suppressor genes TP53, PTEN and RB1, we identify seven genes that also include hepsin, GSTP1 and AMACR. We show that genes associated with cancer may have differential gene-gene expression patterns with many other genes in different cell states. By discovering such patterns, we may be able to identify carcinogenesis related genes.     

Neurophysiological and Psychophysiological Effects of Sulpiride in the Norm and in Patients with Opiate Addiction

We studied characteristics of the EEG activity and psychophysiological indices in healthy persons and patients with opiate addiction (in the states of abstinence and remission) before and after peroral introduction of 200 mg sulpiride. In the initial state, spectral characteristics of EEG in patients with opiate addiction differed from those in the control (in healthy tested subjects) by higher relative powers of low- and high-frequency components (delta and beta waves) and a considerable depression of the alpha rhythm. Treatment with sulpiride evoked changes in the spectral characteristics of EEG, which showed a significant intergroup specificity; intensification of alpha oscillations was a general effect in all groups. We conclude that the effects of sulpiride on the EEG activity comprised components typical of both neuroleptics and antidepressants; in the group of patients in the abstinence state, the pattern of effects of sulpiride was close in its profile to the effect of anxiolytics. Dynamics of the indices of psychophysiological testing after sulpiride treatment demonstrated that the drug exerts mostly positive regulating effects on the state of higher nervous functions in patients with opiate addiction.     

Stress and drug dependence (animal studies)

This review describes a role of stress in formation of the primary drug-taking behaviour and the effects of stress on a drug-seeking behaviour after withdrawal of drugs. The psychophysiological and neurochemical mechanisms of the rewarding and aversive states during a drug taking and after its withdrawal are considered. A role of separate neurotransmitters and their interactions in formation of drug dependence and the effects of stress on neuroadaptive changes in these neurotransmitter systems are described. A review of the structures involved in mediation of the stress effects and a drug-seeking behaviour is also discussed.     

Marker correspondence, not processing latency, determines temporal binding of visual attributes

BACKGROUND: When simultaneous visual events appear to occur at different times, the discrepancy has generally been ascribed to time differences in neural transmission or cortical processing that lead to asynchronous awareness of the events. RESULTS: We found, however, that an apparent delay of changes in motion direction relative to synchronous color changes occurs only for rapid alternations, and this delay is not accompanied by a difference in reaction time. We also found that perceptual asynchrony depends on the temporal structure of the stimuli (transitions [first-order temporal change] versus turning points [second-order temporal change]) rather than the attribute type (color versus motion). CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the perception of the relative time of events is based on the relationship of representations of temporal pattern that we term time markers. We conclude that the perceptual asynchrony effects studied here do not reflect differential neural delays for different attributes; rather, they arise from a faulty correspondence match between color transitions and position transitions (motion), which in turn results from a difficulty in detecting turning points (direction reversals) and a preference for matching markers of the same type.     

The Degradation of Romanowsky-Type Blood Stains in Methanol

The oxidative demethylation of Romanowsky-type stains in methanol has been examined quantitatively with respect to its effect upon the staining of blood smears. Spectral changes in hound dye, observed through two color filters, have been measured for the nuclei and cytoplasm of segmented neutrophils and monocytes utilizing the LARC™ automated differential analyzer. Stain decomposition in methanol results in a large loss in staining intensity with little change in color. The loss in intensity has been correlated with the observed spectral changes in the degraded stain. High-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of degraded stain samples has shown the products of methanolic degradation to be different from those obtained in aqueous polychroming reactions. To maintain a stain of defined thiazine dye composition and thus defined staining properties, refrigeration is recommended.     

Differential Metabolic Profiles during the Albescent Stages of ‘Anji Baicha’ (Camellia sinensis)

‘Anji Baicha’ is an albino tea cultivar with white shoots at low air temperature and green shoots at high air temperature in early spring. The metabolite contents in the shoots dynamically vary with the color changes and with shoot development. To investigate the metabolomic variation during the albescent and re-greening stages, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry combined with multivariate analysis were applied to analyze the metabolite profiles in the different color stages during the development of ''Anji Baicha'' leaves. The metabolite profiles of three albescent stages, including the yellow-green stage, the early albescent stage, and the late albescent stage, as well as the re-greening stage were distinguished using principal component analysis, revealing that the distinct developmental stages were likely responsible for the observed metabolic differences. Furthermore, a group classification and pairwise discrimination was revealed among the three albescent stages and re-greening stage by partial least squares discriminant analysis. A total of 65 differential metabolites were identified with a variable influence on projection greater than 1. The main differential metabolic pathways of the albescent stages compared with the re-greening stage included carbon fixation in photosynthetic organisms and the phenylpropanoid and flavonoid biosynthesis pathways. Compared with the re-greening stage, the carbohydrate and amino acid metabolic pathways were disturbed during the albescent stages. During the albescent stages, the sugar (fructofuranose), sugar derivative (glucose-1-phosphate) and epicatechin concentrations decreased, whereas the amino acid (mainly glycine, serine, tryptophan, citrulline, glutamine, proline, and valine) concentrations increased. These results reveal the changes in metabolic profiling that occur during the color changes associated with the development of the albino tea plant leaves.