Contribution of Primate Research to Sensory Physiology

1973 ◽  
pp. 381-405
Author(s):  
HIDEO SAKATA
Keyword(s):  
Primate Research ◽  
Sensory Physiology

The Cooking Ape: An Interview with Richard Wrangham

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
elisabeth townsend
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Primate Research ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
Cooked Food ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Brain

Humans: The Cooking Ape Perhaps the first to suggest that humans were cooking as early as 1.9 million years ago, Richard Wrangham shows through his new research and his imagination how and possibly when cooking changed humans dramatically. Wrangham, Harvard University primatologist and MacArthur Fellow, has been studying the evolution of human cooking. After 25 years of primate research at his site in Kibale, Uganda, Wrangham is best known for explaining the similarity and differences across species of primate social organizations. In Kibale, he has analyzed chimpanzees’ behavior: how it’s changed when they interact with the environment and how their social groups have evolved. In particular, he noticed how food changed their interactions with each other. Like that of chimps, human behavior has been affected by food, especially as they shifted from raw to cooked food. Moving from eating food as it was discovered to collecting edibles and cooking them altered our social relationships. Cooked food has changed Homo sapiens physically by making food more digestible thereby altering jaws, teeth, and guts, and providing more calories for more expensive organs such as the brain. Wrangham discusses when and how humans may have started using fire to cook food, what they cooked, and the transition from cooking in an outdoor fire to hearths and open ovens.

Sensory Transduction

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon L. Fain
Keyword(s):  
Ion Channels ◽  
Receptor Cell ◽  
Electrical Response ◽  
Second Messengers ◽  
Sensory Transduction ◽  
Sensory Receptor ◽  
Signal Pathways ◽  
Sense Organs ◽  
Sensory Physiology ◽  
Effector Molecules

Sensory Transduction provides a thorough and easily accessible introduction to the mechanisms that each of the different kinds of sensory receptor cell uses to convert a sensory stimulus into an electrical response. Beginning with an introduction to methods of experimentation, sensory specializations, ion channels, and G-protein cascades, it provides up-to-date reviews of all of the major senses, including touch, hearing, olfaction, taste, photoreception, and the “extra” senses of thermoreception, electroreception, and magnetoreception. By bringing mechanisms of all of the senses together into a coherent treatment, it facilitates comparison of ion channels, metabotropic effector molecules, second messengers, and other components of signal pathways that are common themes in the physiology of the different sense organs. With its many clear illustrations and easily assimilated exposition, it provides an ideal introduction to current research for the professional in neuroscience, as well as a text for an advanced undergraduate or graduate-level course on sensory physiology.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of mating system diversity: oxytocin and vasopressin receptor distributions in monogamous and non-monogamous Eulemur

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas M. Grebe ◽  
Annika Sharma ◽  
Sara M. Freeman ◽  
Michelle C. Palumbo ◽  
Heather B. Patisaul ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mating System ◽  
Interspecific Variation ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Primate Research ◽  
Pair Bonding ◽  
Closely Related Species ◽  
Neuropeptide Receptors ◽  
Monogamous Species ◽  
Vasopressin 1A Receptor ◽  
Rare Opportunity

AbstractContemporary theory that emphasizes the roles of oxytocin and vasopressin in mammalian sociality has been shaped by seminal vole research that revealed interspecific variation in neuroendocrine circuitry by mating system. However, substantial challenges exist in interpreting and translating these rodent findings to other mammalian groups, including humans, making research on nonhuman primates crucial. Both monogamous and non-monogamous species exist within Eulemur, a genus of strepsirrhine primate, offering a rare opportunity to broaden a comparative perspective on oxytocin and vasopressin neurocircuitry with increased evolutionary relevance to humans. We performed oxytocin and arginine vasopressin 1a receptor autoradiography on 12 Eulemur brains from seven closely related species to (1) characterize receptor distributions across the genus, and (2) examine differences between monogamous and non-monogamous species in regions part of putative “pair-bonding circuits”. We find some binding patterns across Eulemur reminiscent of olfactory-guided rodents, but others congruent with more visually oriented anthropoids, consistent with lemurs occupying an ‘intermediary’ evolutionary niche between haplorhine primates and other mammalian groups. We find little evidence of a “pair-bonding circuit” in Eulemur akin to those proposed in previous rodent or primate research. Mapping neuropeptide receptors in these nontraditional species questions existing assumptions and informs proposed evolutionary explanations about the biological bases of monogamy.

scholarly journals Neurophysiology goes wild: from exploring sensory coding in sound proof rooms to natural environments

2021 ◽  
Vol 207 (3) ◽  
pp. 303-319
Author(s):  
Heiner Römer
Keyword(s):  
Sensory System ◽  
Sensory Systems ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Sensory Physiology ◽  
Sound Localisation ◽  
Physical Environments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Adaptive Behaviours

AbstractTo perform adaptive behaviours, animals have to establish a representation of the physical “outside” world. How these representations are created by sensory systems is a central issue in sensory physiology. This review addresses the history of experimental approaches toward ideas about sensory coding, using the relatively simple auditory system of acoustic insects. I will discuss the empirical evidence in support of Barlow’s “efficient coding hypothesis”, which argues that the coding properties of neurons undergo specific adaptations that allow insects to detect biologically important acoustic stimuli. This hypothesis opposes the view that the sensory systems of receivers are biased as a result of their phylogeny, which finally determine whether a sound stimulus elicits a behavioural response. Acoustic signals are often transmitted over considerable distances in complex physical environments with high noise levels, resulting in degradation of the temporal pattern of stimuli, unpredictable attenuation, reduced signal-to-noise levels, and degradation of cues used for sound localisation. Thus, a more naturalistic view of sensory coding must be taken, since the signals as broadcast by signallers are rarely equivalent to the effective stimuli encoded by the sensory system of receivers. The consequences of the environmental conditions for sensory coding are discussed.

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