The increase of domestic animals kept in shelters highlights the need to ensure animal welfare. Environmental enrichment can improve animal welfare in many ways, such as encouraging captive animals to use all the space available to them. The effects of physical environmental enrichment on the spatial distribution and behavioral repertoire of 35 neutered domestic cats housed communally were anal...

Learning is correlated with the assembly of new synapses, but the roles of synaptogenesis processes in memory are poorly understood. Here, we show that mice lacking β-Adducin fail to assemble new synapses upon enhanced plasticity and exhibit diminished long-term hippocampal memory upon environmental enrichment. Enrichment-enhanced the disassembly and assembly of dynamic subpopulations of synaps...

This article provides a brief historical background of the events and circumstances that led to the 1985 Animal Welfare Act (AWA) amendments. It describes the development of the regulations promulgated by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1991 as a result of these amendments, the reasoning given for the proposals, and the revisions that were made during the process. Information is incl...

Environmental conditions can dramatically influence the behavioral and neurochemical effects of drugs of abuse. For example, stress increases the reinforcing effects of drugs and plays an important role in determining the vulnerability to develop drug addiction. On the other hand, positive conditions, such as environmental enrichment, can reduce the reinforcing effects of psychostimulants and m...

We hypothesized that environmental enrichment in rats may reduce cocaine-seeking behaviour elicited by cocaine-priming injections and by cocaine-associated cues. Rats trained to self-administer cocaine while housed in isolated conditions were then assigned to live in isolation or an enriched environment for 21 d of forced abstinence. Subsequently, extinction and reinstatement of cocaine-seeking...

Environmental enrichment is a critical component of Refinement, one of the 3Rs underlying humane experimentation on animals. In this paper I discuss why primates housed in laboratories, which often have constraints of space and study protocols, are a special case for enrichment. I outline a framework for categorising the different types of enrichment, using the marmoset as a case study, and sum...

Environmental enrichment, for more than fifty years, has shown to increase learning in behaviors and to alter some brain structures (Renner and Rosenzweig). Some brain changes that occur when environmental enrichment is implemented include the following: increases in cortical thickness, especially the occipital cortex, increases in size of neuronal cell bodies, number of dendrites and dendritic...

Welfare problems, such as hunger, frustration, aggression, and abnormal sexual behavior, are commonly found in broiler breeder production. To prevent or reduce these welfare problems, it has been suggested to provide stimulating enriched environments. We review the effect of the different types of environmental enrichment for broiler breeders, which have been described in the scientific literat...