Tag : TB

Mumbai: According to a new research from the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California, Davis, and Royal Holloway, University of London, rhesus macaques are able to perceive their own heartbeats. The research, published in 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences', creates a first-of-its-kind animal model of interoception. Interoception refers to the ability to sense the internal state of one's body, such as observing when your heart races or breathing quickens. The findings provide an important model for future psychiatric and neuropsychiatric research as dysfunctions in interoception are associated with anxiety, depression, and Alzheimer's disease. The study is part of a collaboration between Eliza Bliss-Moreau, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis and core scientist at the CNPRC and affective scientist Manos Tsakiris, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, led by Joey Charbonneau, a doctoral student in psychology at UC Davis and including Lara Maister, from Bangor University, Wales. The team monitored four rhesus monkeys that sat in front of an infrared eye tracker displaying stimuli that bounced and generated a sound either synchronously or asynchronously (faster and slower) with the monkeys' heartbeats. Such an experiment capitalizes on the fact that monkeys and human babies look for longer at things that they find surprising or unexpected. All four monkeys spent more time looking at the stimuli presented out of rhythm with their heartbeats compared to stimuli in rhythm with their heartbeats - suggesting that they sensed that the out of rhythm stimuli was surprising based on the expected rhythm of their heartbeats. The results are consistent with evidence previ ...