Behavioral Research Blog - Social Behavior Research

The treatment of Fragile X syndrome is limited to the symptoms. One of the factors currently holding back drug development is the difficulty of finding a reliable behavioral test for neurobiological studies.

Women and Venus, men and Mars, right? In mice, the establishment of social hierarchies is sex-dependent.

Domestication has a considerable effect on the behavior of animals. The dramatic change in their environment and provision of food alter the need for behaviors such as exploration. But what exactly is the difference?

Zebrafish. This little fish is a vertebrate, and a relatively complex one. Looking at the major neurotransmitters and hormones that are investigated in neuroscience, they are as good of a model as many mammalian species.

Why do wolves howl? From research, movies, and even television series, we learn that wolves cry out to each other to facilitate the reassembling of a pack when members have strayed.

How to mark zebrafish without compromising their behavior? They may have just found the answer to this at the University of Toronto. Cheung et al. tried out a method using subcutaneous injection with dyes.

As humans, we help each other because it is the right thing to do. We help our friends and our family. And of course we help strangers as well. Right?

If you want to get on in life, is it better to make friends, or should you trample down the competition? Maybe we can learn something from animals…

Some research requires animals to be studied in groups. For this it is very useful to have video tracking software that can automatically track the behavior of multiple animals simultaneously.

Studies of the mental disorder schizophrenia in lab animals often include behavioral tests to investigate social behavior, cognitive abilities, and motor functioning.