Fetal heart rate and fetal movements provide information on the fetal condition. In the near term human fetus, four behavioural states have been described based upon heart rate patterns and presence or absence of eye and body movements. For our studies concerning fetal physiology as well as the influence of maternal antiepileptic medication and the effects of intrauterine growth retardation on ...

UNLABELLED DIFFICULTIES OF BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT OF CONSCIOUSNESS: An astonishingly high rate of misdiagnosis between vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome and minimally conscious state has been detected. This raises the issue of the adequacy of the consciousness' assessment in patients with disorders of consciousness. The behavioral assessment of consciousness could be not able to...

This paper reviews the current state of bedside behavioral assessment in brain-damaged patients with impaired consciousness (coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state). As misdiagnosis in this field is unfortunately very frequent, we first discuss a number of fundamental principles of clinical evaluation that should guide the assessment of consciousness in brain-damaged patients in orde...

Behavioral end points are being used with greater frequency in neurotoxicology to detect and characterize the adverse effects of chemicals on the nervous system. Behavioral measures are particularly important for neurotoxicity risk assessment since many known neurotoxicants do not result in neuropathology. The chlorinated hydrocarbon class consists of a wide variety of chemicals including polyc...

This paper reviews the current state of bedside behavioral assessment in brain-damaged patients with impaired consciousness (coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state). As misdiagnosis in this field is unfortunately very frequent, we first discuss a number of fundamental principles of clinical evaluation that should guide the assessment of consciousness in brain-damaged patients in orde...

Five conditioned and five unconditioned response procedures for assessing hearing in mice are reviewed. The five conditioned response procedures are conditioned suppression/avoidance, go/no-go, eyeblink conditioning, avoidance conditioning, approaching the source of a sound, and GSR conditioning. Of these, the conditioned suppression/avoidance procedure is the most effective as it has the short...