---start---- behavior 10.28 overall this course has too little time to cover the material. so you have a complete typed set of notes to read. try to read them PRIOR to the lecture. this course will simply cover the highlights. it will teach us how to consider behavioral problems, not how to do behavioral medicine. today we'll talk terminology the problem with behavioral medicine is lack of well defined terms re: exam - people usually do well. there are study questions in the notes. answer them. exam should be easy if you answer the study questions; although all material is of course fair game. so think about terminology. what is the animal communicating to us, and how? dog will not sit on your couch and tell you about traumatic puppyhood. we're talking about behavior as interface of neuroscience and genetics. lack of understanding animal behavior has caused a lot of inhumanity. we can recognize obvious signs - but signs are not the cause, or the mechanism. diagnoses are not diseases, correlation isn't cause separation anxiety - dog is distressed when left alone your going away did not cause the problem spoiling the dog did not cause the problem the dog had the problem you may have precipitated his behavior by leaving you didn't cause him to be this way. what did cause the dog to react this way may have been precipitated by your leaving the house, but you didn't build the dog that way. trainers often suggest that if owner is better owner, more careful, more religious, whatever, dog would improve. silly thought - better owners do not cure diabetes! levels of cause to consider in any behavioral diagnosis: phenotype: role of underlying, broad genotype x environmental interaction; role of phenomenological, functional diagnoses. phenotypic dx: what dog is doing - dominance aggression, separation anxiety, fear biting, etc. dog that bites may bite b/c he is beaten, or b/c of whatever. so you write "liver disease" as a diagnosis - that's not that helpful, right? saame with behavior. you can call something separation anxiety - but why? behavior modification works at this level. Neuroanatomy - role of localization of activity; role of neuroanatomic dx: people with OCD experience a range of signs - caudate nucleus in affected people is smaller with less dense volume than in unaffecteds. perhaps we will find that in dogs too. Neurochemistry: OCD dogs seem to have reduced serotonin levels. consider role of chemical/substrate interaction, mechanistic pathophysiological diagnoses. so we can use SSRIs, etc. molecular level: role of gene regulation, etiologies. newer SSRIs like zoloft, paxil, etc -all work due to funky kind of gene regulation. giving these drugs does the same thing as long term potentiation (memory) - giving this long term reprograms the nucleus of the cell to translate a new protein, to change your receptor, to more tightly match the shape of your own serotonin. that is cool! genotype: mode of heritability, genomic plasticity, etc. we do not understand all this stuff at all these levels. we are trying to figure out this stuff in a colony of genetically fearful dogs. we know phenotype (avoidance of humans w/onset 8 mos), working on anatomy/chem, they do not respond to drugs, it affects 1/2 dogs in each generation.... example of model of heterogeneous condition using mechanistic model: phenotype fearful dog A fearful dog B unaffected dog C anatomy: I I I chemistry: a b b molecular: I' II' II' genotype: a' b' b' dog B lived in house with 5 kids under the age of 5 who were sort of rough on him. all three dogs have normal looking brains, anatomically. dogs B and C have the same neurochemistry. Dog A has different neurochemistry - A is a colony dog. so, dog B can improve with behavior modification. he's not genetically screwy. may need some drug therapy while kids learn how to deal with him. dog A will not improve with behavior modification. he has a genetic problem. now, we try to tx with a drug - if the problem is the same and we tx with different drugs, we could get different responses. if we tx with same drug, and get two different responses, probably not the same problem. don't ask "what drug to use for spraying in cats." - depends on cause of spraying. facets of behavioral diagnosis: necesary and sufficient criteria for making the dx - does behavior meet these criteria? can dx be made? separation anxiety requires distress in the absence of the owner. some dogs will salivate, some will destroy, some will bark. barking is not separation anxiety. distress in absence of owner is. demography and epidemiology: how may of the animals show the signs, do they cluster, and are resposes different for different clusters? [she's talking about Richard Feynman. I *love* Feynman. I highly highly recommend you go out and read "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman" and the other books about him, because he is an amazing person. well, was, before he died.] so, if you say "separation anxiety" you are talking about criteria that have been met. then you want to know who has which signs. two numerical sets: prime numbers and the number 3. hopefully this is in the notes, because i am not writing down this example. the point is, it is important to differentiate by necessary conditions. cushings' dz - necessary signs are all the clinical signs, sufficient signs - above signs in presence of inappropriate ACTH secretion by the pituitary as confirmed by elevated response to ACTH stim test, etc. mechanistic content: if there are nonspecific signs shared by 2 different dzs - both dogs destroy stuff during storms, when left alone, etc. signs of storm phobia: salivation, trembling, shaking, vocalization, destruction, elimination, increased or decreased motor activity signs of separation anxiety: exactly the same signs of panic disorder: exactly the same so you can't base a dx on nonspecific signs! number of signs may be important prognosticators but that is b/c constellations/presentations of signs suggest underlying mechanistic variablity. if you have non overlapping sets of signs - consider what happens when they intersect. if there is no effect of one on the other, the effects of say, salivation and destruction, will be equal. here, if patient has separation anxiety, probability of having storm phobia is 8%. if they have storm phobia, probability of having separation anxiety is 40%. so when your react to storm, something happens, and you are more prone to other anxiety disorders. why? good question. so a list of signs isn't a dx, but can give you info about demography of popultaion, and putative underlying phenotypic a nd neurochemical heterogeneity. "...if the words you choose affect your interpretation and thinking, the actual words become very important." - R. Feynman example of problematic classification: Gripper, 1996 proposed classification for feline urine marking (spraying): 1. positive (sexual) - "positive" is a value. bad. 2. negative (reactional) - "negative" is a value. bad. stage 1: reactional, stage 2 anxious, stage 3 anxious/aggressive, stage 4 something else. another approach: patterns of spraying involving aggression: 1. active aggression - confident cat a. sexual advertisement/competition b. advertisement not associated with sex - may avoid aggression c. post aggression victory signal - may decrease future aggression 2. passive aggresion - less confident cat a. passive threaat b. response to prior attack c. response to olfactory cue d. anxious or fearful response to uncertain environment 3. status related spraying a. may involve urine and feces b. may be behavioral, not olfactory c. defines mine vs not mine - association with bunting and other visual behaviors? the NYT magazine had an article in it about kids from russian orphanages. the problem was explained by one MD as by saying there was no diagnostic code for the kids' problems. one doc said schizophrenia, one doc said autism, one said Tourette's - each was partly true. this MD said that really, it should be called "complex neuropychological behavior disorder of the post-institutionalized child." but, insurance doesn't cover that one. you can't mistake codes you have created, descriptive diagnoses you use, as some Platonic ideal of truth. dogbert, do you think love is the strongest force in the universe? no, i'd have to go with stupidity, followed closely by its cousin ignorance. by the way - vote next week. you'll be glad. ---end----