Aggression can be modulated by both genetic and environmental factors. Here, we analyse how the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) genotype and the environmental situation in which a contest takes place shape the display of offensive aggression. Therefore, male wildtype, heterozygous, and homozygous 5-HTT knockout mice, which are known to differ in inborn levels of anxiety, were confronted three tim...

The rodent brief-access taste aversion (BATA) model is an efficient in vivo screening tool for taste assessment. A new E(max) (maximum effect attributable to the drug) model was developed and further investigated in comparison with three previously published models for analysing the rodent BATA data; the robustness of all the models was discussed. The rodent BATA data were obtained from a serie...

Although previous research has successfully tested the usefulness of cognitive and non-cognitive factors to predict dental anxiety, they have rarely been jointly analysed. This study therefore aimed to compare the relative predictive power of a set of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in accounting for dental anxiety scores. A sample of 167 Spanish undergraduate students (81.4% women; mean ag...

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) has been proposed to be an important maintaining factor in several anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social phobia. While IU has been shown to predict subjective ratings and decision-making during uncertain/ambiguous situations, few studies have examined whether IU also predicts emotional responding to u...

The modulation of memory processes is one of the several functions of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) in the brain, with CB1 receptors highly expressed in areas such as the dorsal hippocampus. Experimental evidence suggested an important role of the ECS in aversively motivated memories. Similarly, glucocorticoids released in response to stress exposure also modulates memory formation, and both...

Dopamine is an important neuromodulator in animals and its roles in mammalian sexual behavior are extensively studied. Drosophila as a useful model system is widely used in many fields of biological studies. It has been reported that dopamine reduction can affect female receptivity in Drosophila and leave male-female courtship behavior unaffected. Here, we used genetic and pharmacological appro...

Learning how to actively avoid a predictable aversive stimulus involves two steps: recognizing the cue that predicts upcoming punishment, and learning a behavioral response that will lead to avoidance. In zebrafish, ventral habenula (vHb) neurons have been proposed to participate in both steps by encoding the expected aversiveness of a stimulus. vHb neurons increase their firing rate as expecta...

RATIONALE It has been shown previously that the amplitude of the pupillary light reflex response decreases when subjects anticipate an aversive stimulus (i.e. electric shock), compared to periods when subjects are resting ('fear-inhibited light reflex'). OBJECTIVE To compare the effects of the anticipation of an electric shock (putative aversive event) and of an acoustic stimulus (putative ne...

Fifty subjects with mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss and prior experience with amplification were evaluated at two sites (25 subjects at each site). Speech recognition in noise scores were measured using the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) for each subject while wearing binaural behind-the-ear hearing aids allowing switching between two fitting algorithms ("basic" and "party") ...