Dopamine neurons of the ventral midbrain have been found to signal a reward prediction error that can mediate positive reinforcement. Despite the demonstration of modest diversity at the cellular and molecular levels, there has been little analysis of response diversity in behaving animals. Here we examine response diversity in rhesus macaques to appetitive, aversive, and neutral stimuli having...

OBJECTIVE Peripheral nerve injury elicits an aversive state of spontaneous neuropathic pain, and up to now, the modulation of this concomitant aversive state remains a major therapeutic challenge. NMDA receptor subunits NR2B in the rACC are critically involved in the processing of this aversive state and then a strategy targeted at the NR2B subunit might be promising for modulation of the avers...

Gelotophobes (individuals with a fear of being laughed at) have even been found to express less joy and more contempt towards joyfully smiling/laughing faces compared to non-gelotophobes. However, it is unclear whether the lower levels of joy and higher levels of contempt are related to joy per se or only to those elements of joy associated with laughter. Thus, this study investigated the verba...

It was hypothesized that appreciation of the structural basis and of sexual content in humor is related to punitiveness in different ways. Sixty-eight male subjects served as lay judges and stipulated what would be the just minimum and maximum punishment of committing one of 25 criminal acts and filled in scales relating to humor appreciation, conservatism, dogmatism, and intolerance of ambigui...

Road traffic accidents (RTA) are one of the most important causes of death and disability all over the world. In developing countries the problem is more complicated. Based on the estimation by UNICEF, rate of RTA in Iran is 20 times more than world’s average. In Iran among all unintentional fatal injuries inflicted on children under five, traffic related fatalities are the leading cause ...

We examine the evolution and maintenance of defence and conspicuousness in prey species using a game theoretic model. In contrast to previous works, predators can raise as well as lower their attack probabilities as a consequence of encountering moderately defended prey. Our model predicts four distinct possibilities for evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) featuring maximum crypsis. Namely ...

The present experiment examines the effects of extraversion and consumption of alcohol on facial and verbal indicators of humor-induced positive affect. Sixty one female students were placed into one of three alcohol conditions (no ethanol, low dose, high dose) and were exposed to 30 slides containing jokes or cartoons. Facial measurements of smiling and laughter, funniness and aversiveness of ...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether spatial hippocampus-dependent learning is affected by the serotonergic system and stress. Therefore, 5-HTT knockout (-/-), heterozygous (+/-) and wildtype (+/+) mice were subjected to the Barnes maze (BM) and the Morris water maze (WM), the latter being discussed as more aversive. Additionally, immediate early gene (IEG) expression, hippocampal ...

Deception studies emphasize on the importance of event-related potentials (ERP) for a reliable differentiation of the underlying neuro-cognitive processes. The stimulus-locked parietal P3 amplitude has been shown to reflect stimulus salience but also attentional control available for stimulus processing. Known stimuli requiring truthful responses (targets) and known stimuli requiring deceptive ...

Many psychological learning theories have noted commonalities between aversive states produced by presentation of negative reinforcers, such as electric shock, and the omission of expected positive reinforcers, such as food. Here, three groups of rats received training with one auditory cue paired with shock and another with the omission of expected food, a shock-paired cue and a food-omission ...