On 16 Aug 2008 at 15:01, DeVolder Carol L wrote: > > There are many studies conducted using cats. Continuing vision research > and sleep studies are just a few that come to mind right now,
and Michael Britt queried: >Sleep studies? With cats? Despite a follow-up from Michael answering his own question, I can add a few details. The father of the study of brain mechanisms in sleep in animals is the neurophysiologist Michel Jouvet of the University of Lyon (Claude Bernard University). His primary experimental animal was the cat. I believe he was the first to identify and describe the characteristics of REM sleep, which he called "paradoxical sleep" because the cat was asleep while its EEG appeared to show it to be awake. He also was the first to report (and film) "REM without atonia" caused by lesions to the pontine region of the cat brain. The film clip shows an asleep cat, released from muscular inhibition (atonia) by the lesions, apparently acting out its dreams. This has led to the recognition of a related condition in humans called REM sleep disorder. He published hundreds (my guess, but 462 are in PubMed) of studies on sleep in the cat. Another notable set of psychology-related researches on the cat was the work of Masserman and Wolpe. Masserman developed a method of driving cats crazy (by subjecting them to a conflict between shock and food, I recall). Wolpe took this research one step further and described experiments on cats to reverse their conflict-induced neuroses. This was the origin of his systematic desensitization treatment in humans, one of the first well-documented forms of behaviour therapy. Lastly, there are a remarkable series of studies which used not cats, but merely the essence of cat. These were initiated by Berdoy (2000), who showed that the common parasite toxoplasma gondii causes infected rats to lose their fear of cats. The studies were carried out by testing the reaction of infected and non-infected rats to the odour of cat urine. Presumably, the (evolutionary) advantage to the parasite of this creepy manipulation of the brain of the rat is that the infected and now imprudent rat gets eaten by the cat, thus furthering the parasite's life cycle. Later work by Flegr in particular (e.g. 2007) suggests that this parasite, which silently infects many of us, actually produces subtle changes in personality and behaviour. And we owe this unsettling insight to cat urine. Berdoy M, Webster JP, Macdonald DW. (2000). Fatal attraction in rats infected with Toxoplasma gondii.Proc Biol Sci.,267(1452):1591-4. Flegr J.(2007). Effects of toxoplasma on human behavior. Schizophr Bull.33: 757-60. Jouvet, M. (1967). The states of sleep. Scientific American 216: 62-68. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
