Methods and materials: In this study 21 male Sprague-Dawley rats weighing 200-250 g were randomly divided into two groups: social and isolation. After 14 days of isolation and sociality rats were examined for salt solution consumption, sucrose intake, and novelty seeking behavior. Then rats were anesthetized and sacrificed for assessing oxidative stress (OS) indices for glutathione and nitrite/...

The pilot study reported here applies content analysis techniques to twenty interviews carried out in preparation for mediated searches as part of the 'Uncertainty in Information Seeking' project. The tools used in the analysis (Atlas.ti and TEXTStat) are described and their contribution assessed. TEXTStat, a free program, was used to produce frequency counts of the words used in the interview ...

background and objectives: study of deleterious effect of neurotoxins on the animals' brain is a fascinating research plan. in this project, the damage effect of colchicine on the hippocampal cornu ammonis 1 (ca1) was examined by the studying the hippocampal tissue. materials and methods: injections of colchicine (1-75 μg/rat, intra- hippocampal ca1) were performed in cannulated male wistar rat...

The present study sought to integrate convergent lines of research on the associations among the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) gene, novelty seeking and drinking behaviors with the overall goal of elucidating genetic influences on problematic drinking in young adulthood. Specifically, this study tested a model in which novelty seeking mediated the relationship between DRD4 variable number of tand...

Trait novelty seeking has been consistently implicated in substance use, yet the origins and mechanisms of novelty seeking in substance use proneness are unclear. We aimed to characterize novelty seeking as a phenotypic marker of substance use proneness in adolescence, a critical period for drug use experimentation. To this end, we parsed novelty seeking's two constituent subdimensions - explor...

Novelty-seeking temperament is defined as the reaction to novel or risk situations and objects, and by the global disposition to explore such stimuli. Our purpose was to describe and compare this trait in primates. For this purpose, a risk-taking Index, a curiosity index, and a novelty-seeking index were correlated to several biosocial variables using 22 captive stumptail macaques (Macaca arcto...

BACKGROUND Recently, a negative association between Toxoplasma-infection and novelty seeking was reported. The authors suggested that changes of personality trait were caused by manipulation activity of the parasite, aimed at increasing the probability of transmission of the parasite from an intermediate to a definitive host. They also suggested that low novelty seeking indicated an increased l...

Does foraging change across the life span, and in particular, with aging? We report data from two foraging tasks used to investigate age differences in search in external environments as well as internal search in memory. Overall, the evidence suggests that foraging behavior may undergo significant changes across the life span across internal and external search. In particular, we find evidence...