scholarly journals Effects of early visual experience on the background preference in juvenile cuttlefish Sepia pharaonis

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 740-743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi-Hsin Lee ◽  
Hong Young Yan ◽  
Chuan-Chin Chiao
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Visual Experience ◽  
Choice Experiments ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Object Size ◽  
High Contrast ◽  
Sepia Pharaonis ◽  
Body Patterns ◽  
Enriched Environments

Although cuttlefish are capable of showing diverse camouflage body patterns against a variety of background substrates, whether they show background preference when given a choice of substrates is not well known. In this study, we characterized the background choice of post-embryonic cuttlefish ( Sepia pharaonis ) and examined the effects of rearing visual environments on their background preferences. Different rearing backgrounds (enriched, uniformly grey and checkerboard) were used to raise cuttlefish from eggs or hatchlings, and four sets of two-background-choice experiments (differences in contrast, shape, size and side) were conducted at day 1 and weeks 4, 8 and 12 post-hatch. Cuttlefish reared in the enriched environment preferred high-contrast backgrounds at all post-embryonic stages. In comparison, those reared in the impoverished environments (uniformly grey and checkerboard) had either reversed or delayed high-contrast background preference. In addition, cuttlefish raised on the uniformly grey background, exposed to a checkerboard briefly (0.5 or 3 h) at week 4 and tested at week 8 showed increased high-contrast background preference. Interestingly, cuttlefish in the enriched group preferred an object size similar to their body size at day 1 and week 4, but changed this preference to smaller objects at week 12. These results suggest that high-contrast backgrounds may be more adaptive for juvenile cuttlefish, and visually enriched environments are important for the development of these background preference behaviours.

Perception-Action Coupling in Grasping of Children with Down Syndrome

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert J.P. Savelsbergh ◽  
John van der Kamp ◽  
Walter E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Down Syndrome ◽  
Body Size ◽  
Random Order ◽  
Object Size ◽  
Children With Down Syndrome ◽  
Hand Size ◽  
Dimensionless Ratio ◽  
Action Coupling ◽  
Perception Action

Twenty-one children with Down syndrome (DS) and 20 without disability, ages 3 to 11 years, completed the experiment in which they were asked to grasp and lift cardboard cubes of different sizes (2.2 to 16.2 cm in width). Three conditions were used: (a) increasing the size from the smallest to the largest cube, (b) decreasing the size from the largest to the smallest, and (c) a random order of sizes. Children with DS were found to have smaller hand sizes in comparison to age-matched children without DS. In addition, the shift from one-handed to two-handed grasping appeared at a smaller cube size for children with DS than for children without DS. However, when the dimensionless ratio between object size and hand size was considered, the differences between groups disappeared, indicating that the differences in grasping patterns between children with and without DS can be attributed to differences in body size.

scholarly journals Overcoming the detectability costs of symmetrical coloration

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1918) ◽  
pp. 20192664
Author(s):  
J. Benito Wainwright ◽  
Nicholas E. Scott-Samuel ◽  
Innes C. Cuthill
Keyword(s):  
High Contrast ◽  
Developmental Constraints ◽  
Wing Area ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Avian Predators ◽  
Visual Systems ◽  
Lepidopteran Species ◽  
Symmetrical Body ◽  
Axis Of Symmetry ◽  
Body Patterns

For camouflaged prey, enhanced conspicuousness due to bilaterally symmetrical coloration increases predation risk. The ubiquity of symmetrical body patterns in nature is therefore paradoxical, perhaps explicable through tight developmental constraints. Placing patterns that would be salient when symmetrical (e.g. high contrast markings) away from the axis of symmetry is one possible strategy to reduce the predation cost of symmetrical coloration. Artificial camouflaged prey with symmetrical patterns placed at different distances from the axis were used in both visual search tasks with humans and survival experiments with wild avian predators. Targets were less conspicuous when symmetrical patterning was placed outside a ‘critical zone’ near the midline. To assess whether real animals have evolved as predicted from these experiments, the saliency of features at different distances from the midline was measured in the cryptically coloured forewings of 36 lepidopteran species. Salience, both in absolute terms and relative to wing area, was greatest away from the axis of symmetry. Our work, therefore, demonstrates that prey morphologies may have evolved to exploit a loophole in the ability of mammalian and avian visual systems to spot symmetrical patterns.

scholarly journals Individual Detection and Tracking of Group Housed Pigs in Their Home Pen Using Computer Vision

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisette. E. van der Zande ◽  
Oleksiy Guzhva ◽  
T. Bas Rodenburg
Keyword(s):  
Computer Vision ◽  
Detection Algorithm ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Tracking Algorithm ◽  
Individual Activity ◽  
Detection Model ◽  
Detection And Tracking ◽  
Tracking By Detection ◽  
Enriched Environments ◽  
The Individual

Modern welfare definitions not only require that the Five Freedoms are met, but animals should also be able to adapt to changes (i. e., resilience) and reach a state that the animals experience as positive. Measuring resilience is challenging since relatively subtle changes in animal behavior need to be observed 24/7. Changes in individual activity showed potential in previous studies to reflect resilience. A computer vision (CV) based tracking algorithm for pigs could potentially measure individual activity, which will be more objective and less time consuming than human observations. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of state-of-the-art CV algorithms for pig detection and tracking for individual activity monitoring in pigs. This study used a tracking-by-detection method, where pigs were first detected using You Only Look Once v3 (YOLOv3) and in the next step detections were connected using the Simple Online Real-time Tracking (SORT) algorithm. Two videos, of 7 h each, recorded in barren and enriched environments were used to test the tracking. Three detection models were proposed using different annotation datasets: a young model where annotated pigs were younger than in the test video, an older model where annotated pigs were older than the test video, and a combined model where annotations from younger and older pigs were combined. The combined detection model performed best with a mean average precision (mAP) of over 99.9% in the enriched environment and 99.7% in the barren environment. Intersection over Union (IOU) exceeded 85% in both environments, indicating a good accuracy of the detection algorithm. The tracking algorithm performed better in the enriched environment compared to the barren environment. When false positive tracks where removed (i.e., tracks not associated with a pig), individual pigs were tracked on average for 22.3 min in the barren environment and 57.8 min in the enriched environment. Thus, based on proposed tracking-by-detection algorithm, pigs can be tracked automatically in different environments, but manual corrections may be needed to keep track of the individual throughout the video and estimate activity. The individual activity measured with proposed algorithm could be used as an estimate to measure resilience.

scholarly journals The Influences of Community-Enriched Environment on the Cognitive Trajectories of Elderly People

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (16) ◽  
pp. 8866
Author(s):  
Shuyang Yu ◽  
Meng Wei
Keyword(s):  
Elderly People ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Cognitive Levels ◽  
Curve Model ◽  
Changing Trend ◽  
Enriched Environments ◽  
One Year

To examine the influences of community-enriched environment on the cognitive trajectories of the elderly in China, using panel data of 10,057, 3994, 2387, and 1749 older persons aged 65–104 years of the 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014 waves from the Chinese Longitudinal Health Longevity Survey (CLHLS) and a growth curve model, the authors analyzed the changing trend of elderly people’s cognitive abilities with age. The influences of community-enriched environments on cognitive abilities were also investigated. Results show that when all the factors are out of consideration except age, for an older person aged 82.5 years, as he/she grows one year older, his/her cognitive abilities will be reduced by 0.139 points, while for one aged 92.5 years, they will be reduced by 0.199 points, which means cognitive abilities decline rapidly as the individuals grow older. The elderly people from communities with enriched environments have higher cognitive levels and slower declining speeds of cognitive abilities than the other elderly people, proving the long-term ability of such environments to facilitate cognitive abilities. An increase in the stimulation of the enriched environment is needed to prevent or slow down the degeneration of cognitive abilities.

Effects of early environment on the subsequent behaviour of the pig

1994 ◽  
Vol 1994 ◽  
pp. 194-194
Author(s):  
V.E. Beattie ◽  
N. Walker ◽  
I.A. Sneddon
Keyword(s):  
Long Range ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Adult Animal ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Factorial Experiment ◽  
Early Environment ◽  
Housing Environment ◽  
Enriched Environments

Seitz (1954) claimed the infant animal is more susceptible to the long-range effects of experience than the adult animal. The effects of infantile experience has been observed in the pig. Wood-Gush and Beilharz (1983) found that pigs reared in a bare environment did not use substrate, that was provided in later life, to the same extent as pigs which always had access to it. Schouten (1991) found that pigs which had spent the first few weeks of life in a barren environment were more restless in the growing and fattening periods than pigs which had spent their early life in enriched environments.This study investigated the effects of the housing environment in the first six weeks of life on the behaviour of pigs in the growing and fattening stages.In a cross-over study, which examined the effect of change of environment at weaning, 96 piglets in 16 groups each of six littermates were allocated to a 2 x 2 factorial experiment. There were two environments (barren and enriched) and two growth periods, birth to weaning at six weeks and weaning to slaughter at 20 weeks. Intensive husbandry conditions were defined as barren environments. The enriched environment changed at weaning.

Effects of Environmental Change on Problem-Solving Ability in Rats

1976 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Ivinskis ◽  
Vida Ivinskis
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Maze Test ◽  
Enriched Environments

24 rats were used to investigate the effects of frequency of object change in enriched environment on problem-solving ability. Three enriched environments were used E1, E2 and E3. Each environment was equipped with a number of standard objects. Objects in E1 remained unchanged, one object was substituted once a week in E2; and one object was replaced in E3 each day. The rats were tested at 54 and again at 115 days on the Hebb-Williams maze test. Exposure after weaning to enriched environments for 26 days improved rats' problem-solving ability above that of the control group rats. However, frequency of change of objects in the enriched environments did not significantly alter problem-solving ability of these rats.

scholarly journals Cognitive Training Using Fully Immersive, Enriched Environment Virtual Reality for Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild Dementia: Feasibility and Usability Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seo Jung Yun ◽  
Min-Gu Kang ◽  
Dongseok Yang ◽  
Younggeun Choi ◽  
Heejae Kim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Finger Tapping ◽  
Mild Dementia ◽  
Enriched Environments

BACKGROUND Cognitive training using virtual reality (VR) may result in motivational and playful training for patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia. Fully immersive VR sets patients free from external interference and thus encourages patients with cognitive impairment to maintain selective attention. The enriched environment, which refers to a rich and stimulating environment, has a positive effect on cognitive function and mood. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and usability of cognitive training using fully immersive VR programs in enriched environments with physiatrists, occupational therapists (OTs), and patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia. METHODS The VR interface system consisted of a commercialized head-mounted display and a custom-made hand motion tracking module. We developed the virtual harvest and cook programs in enriched environments representing rural scenery. Physiatrists, OTs, and patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia received 30 minutes of VR training to evaluate the feasibility and usability of the test for cognitive training. At the end of the test, the usability and feasibility were assessed by a self-report questionnaire based on a 7-point Likert-type scale. Response time and finger tapping were measured in patients before and after the test. RESULTS Participants included 10 physiatrists, 6 OTs, and 11 patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia. The mean scores for overall satisfaction with the program were 5.75 (SD 1.00) for rehabilitation specialists and 5.64 (SD 1.43) for patients. The response time of the dominant hand in patients decreased after the single session of cognitive training using VR, but this was not statistically significant (<i>P</i>=.25). There was no significant change in finger tapping in either the right or left hand (<i>P</i>=.48 and <i>P</i>=.42, respectively). None of the participants reported headaches, dizziness, or any other motion sickness after the test. CONCLUSIONS A fully immersive VR cognitive training program may be feasible and usable in patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia based on the positive satisfaction and willingness to use the program reported by physiatrists, OTs, and patients. Although not statistically significant, decreased response time without a change in finger tapping rate may reflect a temporary increase in attention after the test. Additional clinical trials are needed to investigate the effect on cognitive function, mood, and physical outcomes.

scholarly journals Cognitive Training Using Fully Immersive, Enriched Environment Virtual Reality for Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild Dementia: Feasibility and Usability Study

10.2196/18127 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. e18127
Author(s):  
Seo Jung Yun ◽  
Min-Gu Kang ◽  
Dongseok Yang ◽  
Younggeun Choi ◽  
Heejae Kim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Response Time ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Enriched Environment ◽  
Finger Tapping ◽  
Mild Dementia ◽  
Enriched Environments

Background Cognitive training using virtual reality (VR) may result in motivational and playful training for patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia. Fully immersive VR sets patients free from external interference and thus encourages patients with cognitive impairment to maintain selective attention. The enriched environment, which refers to a rich and stimulating environment, has a positive effect on cognitive function and mood. Objective The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility and usability of cognitive training using fully immersive VR programs in enriched environments with physiatrists, occupational therapists (OTs), and patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia. Methods The VR interface system consisted of a commercialized head-mounted display and a custom-made hand motion tracking module. We developed the virtual harvest and cook programs in enriched environments representing rural scenery. Physiatrists, OTs, and patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia received 30 minutes of VR training to evaluate the feasibility and usability of the test for cognitive training. At the end of the test, the usability and feasibility were assessed by a self-report questionnaire based on a 7-point Likert-type scale. Response time and finger tapping were measured in patients before and after the test. Results Participants included 10 physiatrists, 6 OTs, and 11 patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia. The mean scores for overall satisfaction with the program were 5.75 (SD 1.00) for rehabilitation specialists and 5.64 (SD 1.43) for patients. The response time of the dominant hand in patients decreased after the single session of cognitive training using VR, but this was not statistically significant (P=.25). There was no significant change in finger tapping in either the right or left hand (P=.48 and P=.42, respectively). None of the participants reported headaches, dizziness, or any other motion sickness after the test. Conclusions A fully immersive VR cognitive training program may be feasible and usable in patients with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia based on the positive satisfaction and willingness to use the program reported by physiatrists, OTs, and patients. Although not statistically significant, decreased response time without a change in finger tapping rate may reflect a temporary increase in attention after the test. Additional clinical trials are needed to investigate the effect on cognitive function, mood, and physical outcomes.

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