Drug abuse is often seen as a unitary phenomenon, partly as a result of the discovery over the past three decades of shared mechanisms of action for addictive substances. Yet the pattern of drug taking is often very different from drug to drug. This is particularly evident in the case of 'club drugs', such as ketamine. Although the number of ketamine abusers is relatively small in the general p...

Adolescents have an increased need to regulate their behavior as they gain access to opportunities for risky behavior; however, cognitive control systems necessary for this regulation remain relatively immature. Parents can impact their adolescent child's abilities to regulate their behavior and engagement in risk taking. Since adolescents undergo significant neural change, negative parent-chil...

We investigated the effects of different doses (0, 2.5, 25 and 250 µg) of the neuropeptide arginine vasotocin (AVT) on the calling characteristics of the grey treefrog in a chorus in its natural habitat. AVT changed some call characteristics known to influence social behaviour in grey treefrogs. It increased call duration and number of pulses in a call, but not dominant frequency, call rate or ...

Phonotactic steering behaviour of the cricket G. bimaculatus was analysed with a new highly sensitive trackball system providing a spatial and temporal resolution of 127 microm and 0.3 ms, respectively. Orientation to artificial calling songs started at 45 dB SPL, it increased up to 75 dB SPL and then saturated. When exposed to two identical patterns of different intensity, crickets significant...

Adolescent development encompasses an ostensible paradox in threat processing. Risk taking increases dramatically after the onset of puberty, contributing to a 200% increase in mortality. Yet, pubertal maturation is associated with increased reactivity in threat-avoidance systems. In the first part of this paper we propose a heuristic model of adolescent affective development that may help to r...