Search

The article presents the results of studies of the behavioral response in 63 elderly women. With the help of a computer complex for psychophysiological studies KPFK-99 "Binatest" we estimated figures of restructuring strategies of decision making in a stochastic environment. The leading psychophysiological mechanisms of behavioral response of older women in a stochastic environment are presented as a high-speed component of decision-making process, and search activity as a dynamic component of motivational orientation dominates over the informational component of the decision-making on the temporary costs. Approximately-research activity is random, that does not change the cognitive response strategy under uncertainty environment. Women aged 65-74 years are observed more time to make decisions and stereotyped of behavior compared to women aged 55-64 years.

Relationships between the predispositions to pendulum movements (PMs), catalepsy, and audiogenic epilepsy in the course of breeding for "nervousness" and freezing have been studied. A positive genetic relationship between PMs, catalepsy, and audiogenic epilepsy has been demonstrated. Eighty to ninety percent of rats selected for enhanced PMs (strain PM+) exhibit predisposition to audiogenic seizures, whereas this frequency in the PM-free strain (PM-) is 10-40%.

The influence of agonists and antagonists of GABA(B) receptors on the development of amnesia has been studied using the passive avoidance test in C57Bl/6J mice with previously generated aggressive and submissive behavioral stereotypes. It is established that baclofen in a dose of 1 mg/kg produces amnesia in aggressive mice and imparts stability with respect to the amnestic influence in submissive mice. Phaclofen in a dose of 5 mg/kg prevents the development of amnesia that is most strongly pronounced in submissive mice.

Typological characteristics of behavior were studied in rats bred for enhancement (PM+) and absence (PM-) of pendulum movements. Excitement in different test situations was manifest in PM+ rats, whereas passive defensive reactions were characteristic of PM- rats. Increased excitability of PM+ rats was expressed in their greater predisposition to audiogenic epilepsy (83% in PM+ versus 40% in PM- rats). On the contrary, PM- rats were found to be more prone to freezing (61% in PV- versus 11% in PM+). In PM+ rats, noradrenaline and serotonin contents were decreased in hypothalamus (as compared to PM- and control Wistar stain), whereas in PM- rats, serotonin content was increased in striatum, hypothalamus and midbrain as compared to control strains.

The article contains experimental data on the neurophysiological mechanisms of dominant motivations. Motivation is considered a component of the system architectonics of behavioral actions, closely connected with the mechanisms of reinforcement. The author shows that cortico-subcortical mechanisms constitute the energetic basis for dominant motivations. The apparatus of action result acceptor plays the role of the directing component of human goal-seeking activity. The author considers the role of action result acceptor in interaction with dominant motivation, in the molecular mechanisms of genetically determined and individually acquired memory, and in the forming of dynamic stereotypes.

The effects of forced swimming on retrieval of the passive avoidance during its extinction were found to depend on aggressive and submissive behavior. In mice without generated behavioral stereotypes, swim stress applied before or after training stabilized retention of the memory trace retrieval. The similar improved influence of forced swimming on memory storage is revealed in submissive, but not aggressive mice. The increase of resistance against extinction under the swim stress can be connected to facilitation of emotional processes.

The research was aimed at analysis of interaction of basic behavioural strategy, extinction of information novelty and efficiency of amnesic influence. It is shown that preliminary habituation to the task apparatus prevented development of amnesia, induced detention of the animal in a dangerous compartment in submissive rather than aggressive mice C57BL/6J. The findings suggest that revealed distinctions in effects of pre-exposure on development of amnesia are essentially predetermined by selectivity of extinction of the information novelty specific to a stereotype of behaviour.

Rats behaviour in the "open field" changed in 2 hrs after a single episode of hypoglycaemia was abolished with glucose whereas no changes occurred in their stereotyped behaviour and intraspecies interaction. In 24 hrs quantitative parameters of the "open field" behaviour normalised although the behaviour still had an altered structure. At the same time, amphetamine-induced stereotyped behaviour's indices became reduced. These and other findings suggest some deeper behavioural changes in rats during their recovery from repeated hypoglycaemic episodes and absence of synchronisation of the insulin effects.

The paper is concerned with an analysis of the origin and development of pathological stereotypes in patients with epilepsy. Different kinds of those stereotypes which are encountered most frequently among epileptics are described. Examples illustrating the origin of the pathological system of conditioned reflex relations in epileptics of varying age are considered. Emphasis is laid on the importance of preventing pathological stereotypes interfering with the treatment of patients suffering from epilepsy. It is shown that changes in those stereotypes require long, sometimes of many years, educational correction and psychotherapeutic work.

The experiments were carried out on rats of Wistar (W) and Krushinsky-Molodkina (KM) lines, differing in the level of task performance in conditions of multiple choice of food sources in a 12ray radial symmetrical maze. It is shown that in the radial maze, the rats of both lines use a number of behavioural tactics. To determine the influence of changes of environmental spatial characteristics while preserving the main experimental strategy--never revisit the places of reinforcement,--on the peculiarities of tactics manifestations maze modifications were elaborated. Besides the environmental procedure was changed. Under all conditions the rats of W line solved the task. According to the situation, they either preserved former tactics or developed some new ones. The rats of KM line could not solve the task in changed conditions. In most sessions, appearance or absence of given tactics was not adequate to new conditions. The presence of the necessary tactics not always facilitated the task solving. Thus, for the realization of adequate reactions, the presence of necessary tactics is not sufficient: their "tuning" is needed depending on situation. The possibility is supposed of genetic determination of rats ability to some tactics. However, it is emphasized, that tactics are not strongly fixed, as their realization depends on environmental conditions.

On the basis of a psychopathological analysis of art work of schizophrenics (over 300 pictures painted by 35 patients) two main tendencies were elucidated. The first one was a tendency, marked to one or another degree, towards geometrization of the forms followed by their deformation and decomposition into the constituent elements. This tendency was mostly seen in the patients with appreciable abnormalities in the thinking sphere (diffuse and inconsistent judgements). The second tendency was manifested by striving for compositions resembling with pictures of children and cheap popular prints. In the group of the patients with this tendency there prevailed subjects with a noticeable shift in the emotional-volitional sphere towards apathy and abulia. It is inferred that the data obtained are specific enough and may be used as additional-diagnostic criteria for delimitation of the defect conditions.

Experiments on white mice demonstrated that the appearance of extrapyramidal disturbances depends upon the scheme of haloperidol administration. A long-term use of the preparation leads to development of habituation, while its cessation--to symptoms similar to withdrawal. The development of extrapyramidal disturbances does not increase the antagonism of haloperidol in relation to phenamine, but distinctly increases and prolongs the activizing action of the blood serum of schizophrenic patients on the behaviour of animals.

On the basis of the examination covering 30 young children (aged 2 months to 3.5 years), three variants of motor psychogenic disorders were specified. Group I included elementary, stereotypic motor phenomena expressed as special poses, rocking, jack-knifing, finger sucking and other stereotypes of motor acts. Group II was characterized by more complicated motor and psychomotor disorders in the form of various manifestations of motor infantilism. Group III comprised children with neurotic motor monosymptomatic and ritual-behavioural obsessive actions. The above disorders are assessed from the evolutional-dynamic point of view.

The authors compared 2 types of defective states with a predominance of the syndrome of monotonous activity in the structure of a protracted remission in shift-like schizophrenia. Of the syndrome of monotonous activity of the 1st type the following conditions were most characteristic: autistic activity; a selective attraction to certain forms of work despite their relative high degree of organization and complexity; hyperactivity which was next to an overvalued approach to work. The 2nd type was characterized by a passive attitude to work, a significant restriction of forms of work and machine-like, similar to stereotypicity, character of activity.

The adequacy of a modified variant of alimentary Y-maze method used by the authors was tested by studying the role of visual stage stimuli in reaction of free choice in rats. It is shown that the role of visual information is insignificant for acquiring the motor habit--finding of the shortest way to food. The dominant factors are: location of the shortest way, changing of which leads to a search behaviour by the method of "trials and errors", as well as ecologically adequate preference of edges to the center of the "distributor" and motor pretuning of the animal. Observed fixation of the choice of longer ways in comparison with the shortest one, and its stability may be explained by insufficient difference in the ways length before the reinforcement for the transformation of the habit of spatial-motor orientation into a visual one.

Hyperactive determinant dispatch stations (DDS), representing generators of pathologically increased excitation, were created in the rostral part of both caudate nuclei in rats with the aid of tetanus toxin, which disturbed various kinds of inhibition. Formation of such DDS generators in the indicated structures induced stereotypes, impulsive convulsive movements and catalepsy.

Stereotype movements in cats following the administration of bid dosages of phenamine is accompanied by crude disorders of conditioned avoidance with an increase of intrasignal reactions, a weakening of differentiated inhibition and an inhibition of avoidance responses due to low frequency irritation of the caudate nucleus. Caffeine even in large dosages does not possess such properties. Phenamine as in caudectomia decreases the amount of monomodel neurons in the neocortex, as well as group postdischarges in the caudate response of neurons. It is assumed that many indices of phenamine stereotypicity, as a possible model of psychopathology, may be explained by disturbances of the filtering and retention functions of the caudate nucleaus.

The motor activity and changes in the latent periods of motor responses were studied in 100 patients with circular and involutional depression, following a single administration of 50 mg of melipramine. A certain correlation was found between the degree of impairment of lability of neural processes and the therapeutic activity of antidepressants. The latter's use was more advisable in patients with milder inertia of neural processes. Four prognostic criteria enabling a reliable prognosis of the immediate effect of amitriptyline and melipramine have been ascertained. These include the speed of formation of a motor stereotype, a sufficient rate of motor responses, and reduction of their latent periods following a single administration of 50 mg of melipramine.

On 24 males and 26 females of white rats of a mixed line, a study was carried out of the speed of formation and consolidation of instrumental drinking and defensive conditioned reflexes, elaboration of differentiation, changes in conditioned activity by the use of stochastic stereotype and by changing the meanings of the conditioned signals to opposite. Conditioned reflexes were elaborated more rapidly in female rats at drinking reinforcement and in male rats--at the defensive one. Differentiations were elaborated more rapidly and were better expressed in females than in males at both types of reinforcement.

In unrestrained cats, after the electro--shock seizures, the afamphetamine--indused stereotype, behavior was increased and the caudate circular response to high--frequency stimulation was facilitated. The delayed response to low-frequency stimulation of the caudate nucleus was, on the contrary, decreased. Thresholds of the circular and delayed responses to stimulation of the thalamus and capsula interna did not change in the post--seizure period. The above shifts are supposed to be due to weakening of the caudate nucleus inhibitory function resulting from the electro--shock--evoked increase in the caudate dophamine.

A multifactor stage-by-stage system of interpreting the data of the "pictogram" test has been developed on the basis of analyzing the results obtained form 500 healthy probands, 150 schizophrenics, 70 patients with late sequels of craniocerebral injuries, and 50 patients with neuroses. The system enables one to use this method for examining some peculiarities of probands' personality. In this case the "projective" elements of the method combining to a certain extent the "pictogram" and Rorschach's test are realized. Other peculiarities of the "pictogram" unite this method with some picture tests. In addition to the traditional "qualitative" characteristics one should take into consideration some quantitative relationships.

Alimentary conditioned reflexes in the form of pressing (with an effort not less than 600 g) with a fore-leg on the pedal of a nearby feeding-trough, were elaborated by means of classical secretory technique in 15 dogs with defined typological characteristics of the higher nervous activity. The motor habit was formed in about a half of the animals. The ability to instrumental learning was assessed on a five-points scale in accordance with four stages of habit formation. The study revealed an absence of direct dependance between the obtained typological characteristics of the animals and their ability to instrumental conditioning.

Motor activity elaborated in dogs and consisting of delayed choice reactions in a stochastic system (methods developed by Beritashvili, Hunter) and of rhythmic stereotypes of motor situational reflexes (Kupalov method) was not impaired by changes in spatial parameters of unconditioned stimulus in the stochastic system of choosing one feeding trough out of five. The changes in the spatial arrangement of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli in stable stereotypes led to changes in the behaviour of the animals and experimental neurosis with long-lasting disturbances in the situational conditioned reflexes and the short-term memory.

It is found that jactatio capitis, a stereotyped hyperkinesis in the form of pendulum-like motions of head and body, reported earlier by other authors as provoked by different neurotropic drugs, can appear in rats and mice spontaneously under emotional excitement. This hyperkinesis has different frequency in different strains, and the frequency and the degree of expression increase along with the increase of the degree of inbreeding. Hybridological analysis has shown that the jactatio capitis is connected with the suppression of eumelanin synthesis, and is a manifestation of pleiotropic effect of genotypes c or pp for C and Ploci of coat colour. It occurs in albinos and in animals of yellow colour, and is never found in those with black, brown or grey colour, or in black-, grey- or brown-spotted animals. The jactatio capitis shows a negative phenotypical correlation with emotionality as determined by the number of defecations, and has a positive connection with the predisposition to audiogenic seizures. The jactatio capitis seems not to be serotonin-ergic symptom. As the stereotypic movements are combined with a kind of "freezing", the authors consider the jactatio capitis to be a kind of catatonic syndrome.