Université de Fribourg

TNF-α suppresses the expression of clock genes by interfering with E-box-mediated transcription

Cavadini, Gionata ; Petrzilka, Saskia ; Kohler, Philipp ; Jud, Corinne ; Tobler, Irene

In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007, vol. 104, no. 31, p. 12843-12848

Production of TNF-α and IL-1 in infectious and autoimmune diseases is associated with fever, fatigue, and sleep disturbances, which are collectively referred to as sickness behavior syndrome. In mice TNF-α and IL-1 increase nonrapid eye movement sleep. Because clock genes regulate the circadian rhythm and thereby locomotor activity and may alter sleep architecture we assessed the influence of...

Université de Fribourg

Relative reward processing in primate striatum

Cromwell, Howard C. ; Hassani, Oum K. ; Schultz, Wolfram

In: Experimental Brain Research, 2005, vol. 162(4), p. 520

Rewards are often not only valued according to their physical characteristics but also relative to other available rewards. The striatum (caudate nucleus, putamen, ventral striatum including nucleus accumbens) is involved in the organization of movement and the processing of reward information. We studied the activity of single striatal neurons in macaques that were presented with different...

Université de Fribourg

Avoiding antisocial behavior among adolescents : The positive influence of classmates’ prosocial behavior

Hofmann, Verena ; Müller, Christoph Michael

In: Journal of Adolescence, 2018, vol. 68, p. 136-145

Introduction. Prior research has shown that classmates’ behavior serves as a descriptive norm for adolescents’ individual behavior. While earlier studies primarily focused on negative peer influence, classmates’ prosocial behavior might be associated with positive individual development. We hypothesized more classroom- level prosocial behavior predicts a lower likelihood of future...

Université de Fribourg

The effect of learning on experimental evolution of resource preference in Drosophila melanogaster

Kawecki, Tadeusz J. ; Mery, Frederic

In: Evolution, 2004, vol. 58, no. 4, p. 757-767

Learning is thought to be adaptive in variable environments, whereas constant, predictable environments are supposed to favor unconditional, genetically fixed responses. A dichotomous view of behavior as either learned or innate ignores a potential evolutionary interaction between the learned and innate components of a behavioral response. We addressed this interaction in the context of...

Université de Fribourg

Natural polymorphism affecting learning and memory in Drosophila

Mery, Frederic ; Belay, Amsale T. ; So, Anthony K.-C. ; Sokolowski, Marla B. ; Kawecki, Tadeusz J.

In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007, vol. 104, no. 32, p. 13051-13055

Knowing which genes contribute to natural variation in learning and memory would help us understand how differences in these cognitive traits evolve among populations and species. We show that a natural polymorphism at the foraging (for) locus, which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG), affects associative olfactory learning in Drosophila melanogaster. In an assay...