Chronic corticosterone improves perseverative behavior in mice during sequential reversal learning.

Background: Stressful life events can both trigger development of psychiatric disorders and promote positive behavioral changes in response to adversities. The relationship between stress and cognitive flexibility is complex, and conflicting effects of stress manifest in both humans and laboratory animals.

Objective: To mirror the clinical situation where stressful life events impair mental health or promote behavioral change, we examined the post-exposure effects of stress on cognitive flexibility in mice.

Animal Behavior in Psychedelic Research.

Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy holds great promise in the treatment of mental health disorders. Research into 5-hydroxytryptamine 2A receptor (5-HTR) agonist psychedelic compounds has increased dramatically over the past two decades. In humans, these compounds produce drastic effects on consciousness, and their therapeutic potential relates to changes in the processing of emotional, social, and self-referential information.

Optimal foraging by a large ungulate in an extreme environment: Wild mountain reindeer select snow-free feeding habitats in winter.

Optimal foraging models predict that individual animals will optimize net energy gain by intensifying forage activity and/or reducing forage energy cost. Then, the free distribution model predicts an animal's distribution in a patchy landscape will match the distribution of the resources. If not modified by other factors, such patterns may be expected to be particularly explicit in variable and extreme, forage-limited, and patchy environments, notably alpine and Arctic environments during winter.