Neural Circuits Underlying Behavioral Flexibility: Insights From Drosophila

Behavioral flexibility is critical to survival. Animals must adapt their behavioral responses based on changes in the environmental context, internal state, or experience. Studies in Drosophila melanogaster have provided insight into the neural circuit mechanisms underlying behavioral flexibility. Here we discuss how Drosophila behavior is modulated by internal and behavioral state, environmental context, and learning. We describe general principles of neural circuit organization and modulation that underlie behavioral flexibility, principles that are likely to extend to other species.

The Psychological and Behavioral Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Ways to Cope With Them

The COVID-19 pandemic and the life after the outbreak introduced numerous changes and uncertainties that led to elevated stress levels in the societies and caused the emergence of various psychological responses for people of all ages to deal with this unprecedented transformation. Throughout this period, the children and adolescents were mostly influenced by being away from school and their peers while the adults had to struggle with the economic crisis and the increased workload both at home and at work. The older adults, on the other hand, had to contend with loneliness, feeling useless, and ageism. In this chapter, considering different age groups, how people are affected by the pandemic-related changes and their common psychological and behavioral responses and coping strategies will be presented. Some recommendations and common solutions to adapt to the “new normal” brought by the pandemic will be also emphasized separately for each age group.

Effectiveness of Social Interactivity in Merchant Websites on Emotional and Behavioral Responses

In a context of hyper connectivity, the designers of commercial websites are constantly seeking to generate favorable psychological states among internet users and to re-enchant them. This research aims to study the effect of the interaction between the social dimensions of interactivity on psychological states and the approach behavior of the e-consumer. Experimentation is chosen as the most appropriate method for testing the proposed model. An online experiment was conducted with 662 internet users. A merchant website was designed for the purposes of the study incorporating the interaction forms investigated. The results of this research underline the power of the social dimension of interactivity in the mediated market environments and show that a socially interactive site can generate the user's flow state, as well as a feeling of being physically present in a remote environment. This relation is moderated by the perceived risk.

An Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Different Advertising Formats on Children’s Attitudes’ Towards Sports Brands

The study aims to investigate children’s attitude towards different advertising formats including TV ads, in-movie product placement and in-game advertisements, using a web-based between subjects’ experimental design among a sample of Egyptian children aged between 6 to 13 years. Children’s attitude development by advertising efforts is considered under investigated in literature particularly in Arab cultures and as they are considered as powerful influencers to parents’ purchase decisions, the study contributes to a better understanding of children’s attitudes that will guide mangers in making wiser advertising budget allocation. The results showed that there is a significant different impact of the investigated advertising formats on children’s attitude towards sports brands with higher cognitive, affective and behavioral responses resulted from the exposure to traditional video advertising compared to in- movie product placement and in-game advertisements.

Striatal dopamine explains novelty-induced behavioral dynamics and individual variability in threat prediction

Animals exhibit diverse behavioral responses, such as exploration and avoidance, to novel cues in the environment. However, it remains unclear how dopamine neuron-related novelty responses influence behavior. Here, we characterized dynamics of novelty exploration using multi-point tracking (DeepLabCut) and behavioral segmentation (MoSeq). Novelty elicits a characteristic sequence of behavior, starting with investigatory approach and culminating in object engagement or avoidance. Dopamine in the tail of striatum (TS) suppresses engagement, and dopamine responses were predictive of individual variability in behavior. Behavioral dynamics and individual variability were explained by a novel reinforcement learning (RL) model of threat prediction, in which behavior arises from a novelty-induced initial threat prediction (akin to shaping bonus), and a threat prediction that is learned through dopamine-mediated threat prediction errors. These results uncover an algorithmic similarity between reward- and threat-related dopamine sub-systems.