Primatology.net

I consider Pakinson’s a very devastating neurodegenerative disease because the affected individuals are fully aware of their degeneration. Unlike Alzheimer’s, where individuals become jaded as the disease progresses, individuals with Parkinson’s are very conscious of what’s happening or actually what’s not functioning correctly — and they can’t do a thing about it!

So some new findings from a biomedical/neurological experiment has just come out where the authors implanted dopamine generators (dopaminergics) into brain cells of macaques. They noted these new generators improved the symptoms of Parkinson’s. Here is a summary of the methods and findings,

“the research was extended to a greater number of non- human primates and for a longer period of time. The procedure involved implanting cell fragments extracted from the carotid body in the striate area of the brain. The carotid body is a small structure located at the bifurcation of the carotid artery, at the level of the neck. Its function is to control the rhythm of respiration and the cardiac frequency through releasing dopamine in situations of low oxygen level in the blood. After the implantation of the cellular aggregates of the carotid body into the striate area of the brain, the improvement in movement in monkeys with Parkinson’s and which had received transplants was demonstrated to last for at least a year.

The research team concluded that the mechanism by which the implants in the striate area of the brain of dopamine-generating cells manage to ameliorate Parkinson’s appears to be related to the capacity of these cells to release substances (trophic factors) that induce an increase of the dopaminergic cells (that usually exist in the normal brain but in lower quantities). Amongst these trophic factors is the GNDF (Glial Cell-derived Neurotrophic Factor).

Cells extracted from the carotid body have been used as a source for dopaminergic cells in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease in animal experiments and in humans. The advantage of this cell type with respect to others is the possibility of carrying out autoimplants, thus avoiding tissue rejection or immunosupressor treatment.”

Personally, I consider this an ethical use of primates in research. Firstly, the cause is noble in my opinion. Parkinson’s is a horrible disease, and in this situation, work done on a primate model has shown us a possible way to treat the disease by inserting doapamine generators. While, I think it will be a while until we actually do that in humans, this research has allowed a possible treatment to be investigated.

If you wanna read the entire publication, here is the a link to the paper, “Modification of the number and phenotype of striatal dopaminergic cells by carotid body graft.”

Since primate brains and sexual dimorphism are topics that are still fresh on our minds after this morning’s post, I figured I should let you know about a new publication that came out of the open access journal BMC Biology on the differences between male and female primate brain structures and how they developed. It ain’t paleoprimatology in any sense, it’s straight up primtate neuroscience.

In “Primate brain architecture and selection in relation to sex” authors,

“Patrik Lindenfors, Charles Nunn and Robert Barton [we wrote about Dr. Barton before, here] examined data on primate brain structures in relation to traits important for male competition, such as greater body mass and larger canine teeth. The researchers also took into account the typical group size of each sex for individual primate species in order to assess sex-specific sociality – the tendency to associate with others and form social groups. The researchers then studied the differences between 21 primate species, which included chimpanzees, gorillas, and rhesus monkeys, using statistical techniques that incorporate evolutionary processes.”

What they found is pretty important, in my opinion. They have concluded that differences between primate sexes cause developmental effects on the brain, and that is due to different pressures on males and females to keep up with social or competitive demands. From News-Medical.net,

“The authors found that sexual selection had an important influence on primates brains. Greater male-on-male competition (sexual selection) correlated with several brain structures involved with autonomic functions, sensory-motor skills and aggression. Where sexual selection played a greater role the septum was smaller, and therefore potentially exercised less control over aggression.

In contrast, the average number of females in a social group correlates with the relative size of the telencephalon (or cerebrum), the largest part of the brain. The telencephalon includes the neocortex, which is responsible for higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands and spatial reasoning. Primates with the most sociable females evolved a larger neocortex, suggesting that female social skills may yield the biggest brains for the species as a whole. Social demands on females and competitive demands on males require skills handled by different brain components, the authors suggest. The contrasting brain types, a result of behavioural differences between the sexes, might be a factor in other branches of mammalian brain evolution beyond anthropoid primates, too.”

I’ve bolded the conclusions that I consider the most impacting. While, I’m weary about the how this applies to humans, I cannot deny the correlations the authors have derived. Research like this is fundamental to understanding the physical origin of very complicated social behaviors, and the authors provide us with a map of primate brains and how they correlate to sex related behaviors.

As far as how this impacts humanity — I believe human brain development is much more complex and social issues and culture imprint human brain development to a much greater degree in humans as compared to non human primates. So it’s a bit hard to say, in my opinion again, that this model of sex-selection and number of females really impact the developments of our brains.

I’m posting this as I run out the door, so forgive me if it is a bit brief and incomplete in explanation… but I have to share this resource/paper with you because less than 1 month ago the Macaque genome draft was released, and this publication is the first application, I know, of the draft of the Macaque genome we read about.

It is a library of unique SNPs to Macaques. SNPs stand for Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms and are defined as inter-individual variations in the genetic code at the level of one nucleotide. They help determine population similarities and differences, as well as operate as genetic landmarks useful for recombination analysis and mapping. This project was made by,

‘pyrosequenc[ing] an animal from western China to maximize diversity when compared to the draft sequence from a rhesus macaque of Indian ancestry.’

It was also made using the 454 sequencing method, famous for its application in the Neandertal genome sequencing project.

Here’s a link to the open access publication, “MamuSNP: A Resource for Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta) Genomics,” and in case you ever wanna compare SNPs here’s a link to the project’s website. Okay, I gotta run, bye!

Science just published a whole slew of papers, posters, news articles, and the like on the Rhesus Macaque because the macaque genome, the first monkey genome to be sequenced, has been unveiled today.

I haven’t read all of the content in this special issue, but from what I have skimmed so far it’s all focused on the genome, of course, but also mobile DNA, genetic relations between two macaque populations, the roles of macaques in biomedical research etc. Rhesus macaques have been used as a model organism in biology for quite sometime, and this special edition of Science pays homage to this magnificent Old World monkey.

I’ve rounded up the links, if you’d like to click around and read some more about these monkeys:

• A Barrel of Monkey Genes
• Boom Time for Monkey Research
• Evolutionary and Biomedical Insights from the Rhesus Macaque Genome
• Mobile DNA in Old World Monkeys: A Glimpse Through the Rhesus Macaque Genome
• Poster: The Macaque Genome
• Evolutionary Formation of New Centromeres in Macaque
• Demographic Histories and Patterns of Linkage Disequilibrium in Chinese and Indian Rhesus Macaques

If you can’t check out all the content, I understand. I’ll be upset, but I’ll get over it. At the very minimum, you should check out the interactive poster that aids in

“exploration, as well as embedded video featuring seven scientists discussing the importance of the macaque and its genome sequence in studies of biomedicine and evolution. We have also created an accompanying teaching resource, including a lesson plan aimed at teachers of advanced high school life science students, for exploring what a comparison of the macaque and human genomes can tell us about human biology and evolution. These items are free to all site visitors.”

I’ve included a screenshot of to wet your monkey lovin’ appetite:

Personally, I have my own beef with sociobiology a.k.a. evolutionary psychology. I have yet to see it venture from a story telling, subjective science. But my issues don’t prevent me from acknowledging and respecting progressive work done in this subfield of behavioral studies and primatology.

I don’t know where Nick Wade truly stands about sociobiology, but I can tell he generally shares my sentiments on appreciating this issue, because he has eloquently summarized the work of Frans de Waal in his new article in the New York Times. I trust that you can tell what the topic and the scope of article is by reading the title, “Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior.”

At its core, this article is useful because it outlines the four basic behaviors for sociality, empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking. If you think about it, our social structure is founded on it, and based off of years of Frans’ observations of chimps, macaques, and rhesus monkeys these traits exist to some degree in non-human primates.

Dr. de Waal makes the tangent that human morality has spawned off of primate sociality,

“but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals. “

The article goes on with a discussion on how Frans has stood up to criticism, competing and contrasting theories on the origins of human morality. I also noticed Nick opens talk about the origins and concept of religion, something I talked about here. But aside from the intricate subtopics, at the very minimum this article also provides us with some insight on why some of us study primate behavior…. even if it is story telling.

I’m curious to open this thread up to a discussion of how and where we think we developed our sense of morality? Is morality a behavioral trait inherited from our evolutionary relatives? Or is our morality a bi-product of our human only cultures? What do you think? Is there a grey area between these two? Can we ever truly find out where morality originated?

I’m opening this post to a discussion of using primates in research as seen in the following video.

Feel free to throw in your two cents… but let’s lay down some rules. In order to participate, first watch the video and then I’ll subjugate you to kindly read my previous posts on this subject matter. But for now, the video:

The posts you should read, or at least skim over, are these four posts on the ethics of using primates in research.

In this video we see how a monkey, looks like a macaque to me, is being used to conduct neurotech research. This type of research is a bit different from biomedical ones, but its applications are outstanding and the potential is nearly irrefutable.

There are many ‘pros’ to this video. As the commentators indicate, most of the these ‘pros’ reside on the fact that tests like these prove that humans without functioning limbs… be it due to paralysis or other forms of loss of function… can now use robotic arms to conduct daily tasks.

This research is very important, in my humble opinion. But it comes at a cost, and these costs are heavy moral ‘cons.’

See how the monkey is trapped in a box? Well it has to be, because I’m fairly sure sure it wouldn’t sit a second doing what the researchers wanted if it weren’t restrained. Also, there was some invasive surgery done. Electrodes are placed inside the monkey’s brain that interface between neurons and the computer and robotic arms… something that is more permanent than putting a monkey in a box for 30 minutes or so.

Knowing those basic pro’s and con’s, how do you feel about research like this? Should it be done in this manner? Do you see anything wrong with it? Do you feel this research is justifiable, given the potential benefits from it?

Paul Wren, from Wanna be an Anthropologist, emailed me this article, “Neonatal Imitation in Rhesus Macaques” the other night. I’m not surprised that John Hawks has already commented on it, but even super-blog Boing Boing has posted on it! The research shows that through several behavioral tests, like infant humans, newborn Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta) learn by imitation. The research influences me to conclude that that this kind of imitation has a purpose, as a form of social learning beyond great apes. Now mimmicry is not limited to apes and humans as previously thought. Rather, it evolved more than 25 million years before the monkey ancestors diverged from the human lineage.

Human newborns have a known capacity to mimic certain specific adult facial expressions, including mouth opening and tongue protrusion. The so-called imitation period lasts up to three months in human infants and two months in chimps. Since newborns cannot see their own faces, they rely on watching adults to learn facial expressions, and mimicry is thought to be crucial to the development of a mother-infant relationship.

The lead author, Pier Ferrari at the University of Parma, Italy, tested 21 newborn macaques by holding each in front of a researcher who made various facial expressions. The abstract reads,

“The emergence of social behaviors early in life is likely crucial for the development of mother–infant relationships. Some of these behaviors, such as the capacity of neonates to imitate adult facial movements, were previously thought to be limited to humans and perhaps the ape lineage. Here we report the behavioral responses of infant rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to the following human facial and hand gestures: lip smacking, tongue protrusion, mouth opening, hand opening, and opening and closing of eyes (control condition). In the third day of life, infant macaques imitate lip smacking and tongue protrusion. On the first day of life, the model’s mouth openings elicited a similar matched behavior (lip smacking) in the infants. These imitative responses are present at an early stage of development, but they are apparently confined to a narrow temporal window. Because lip smacking is a core gesture in face-to-face interactions in macaques, neonatal imitation may serve to tune infants’ affiliative responses to the social world. Our findings provide a quantitative description of neonatal imitation in a nonhuman primate species and suggest that these imitative capacities, contrary to what was previously thought, are not unique to the ape and human lineage. We suggest that their evolutionary origins may be traced to affiliative gestures with communicative functions.”

This picture documents a little macaque mimmicking what I call “sticking out your tongue” test.

At one day old, none of the infants showed any imitation. By day three, however, infants started to copy the researchers’ expressions, including tongue protrusions, mouth opening and lip smacking – all typical macaque expressions. By two weeks, all imitative behaviour had ceased, showing the imitation period in the monkeys is far shorter than for great apes. I wonder if that has to do with some sort of gene expression, or activation of mirror neurons? However, Ferrari notes that macaques may copy other macaques for longer.

Here’s two videos of the macaques immitating. This first one is of a macaque copying tongue poking:

The second of a macaque copying a mouth opening action: