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Pain In Animals
Pain negatively affects the health and welfare of animals. "Pain" is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage." Only the animal experiencing the pain can know the pain's quality and intensity, and the degree of suffering. It is harder, if even possible, for an observer to know whether an emotional experience has occurred, especially if the sufferer cannot communicate. Therefore, this concept is often excluded in definitions of pain in animals, such as that provided by Zimmerman: "an aversive sensory experience caused by actual or potential injury that elicits protective motor and vegetative reactions, results in learned avoidance and may modify species-specific behaviour, including social behaviour." Nonhuman animals cannot report their feelings to language-using humans in the same manner as human communication, but ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Slug
Sea slug is a common name for some Marine biology, marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial Slug, slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are Sea snail, sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that, over evolutionary time, have either entirely lost their shells or have seemingly lost their shells due to having a significantly reduced or internal shell. The name "sea slug" is often applied to Nudibranch, nudibranchs and a paraphyletic set of other marine gastropods without apparent Gastropod shell, shells. Sea slugs have an enormous variation in body shape, color, and size. Most are partially translucent. The often bright colors of Coral reef, reef-dwelling species imply that these animals are under constant threat of predators. Still, the color can warn other animals of the sea slug's toxic stinging cells (nematocysts) or offensive taste. Like all Gastropod, gastropods, they have small, razor-sharp teeth called Radula, rad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avoidance Learning
An avoidance response is a natural adaptive behavior performed in response to danger. Excessive avoidance has been suggested to contribute to anxiety disorders, leading psychologists and neuroscientists to study how avoidance behaviors are learned using rat or mouse models. Avoidance learning is a type of operant conditioning (also known as instrumental conditioning). Active avoidance, passive avoidance, and escape responses An escape response occurs when an aversive stimulus is presented and the subject makes a response to remove or escape the stimulus. In the laboratory, this is usually represented by a rat given a small shock to its feet through a grid floor and shuttling through a small opening in its chamber which stops the shock. Such a response is considered active avoidance when it occurs prior to the stimulus presentation and prevents the stimulus from occurring. In contrast, passive avoidance is the prevention of an aversive stimulus by withholding a behavior, which is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Anaesthetic
A local anesthetic (LA) is a medication that causes absence of all sense, sensation (including pain) in a specific body part without loss of consciousness, providing local anesthesia, as opposed to a general anesthetic, which eliminates all sensation in the entire body and causes unconsciousness. Local anesthetics are most commonly used to eliminate pain during or after surgery. When it is used on specific nerve pathways (local anesthetic nerve block), paralysis (loss of muscle function) also can be induced. Classification LAs are of 2 types: *Clinical LAs: **amino amide LAs **amino ester LAs *Synthetic LAs **Cocaine derivatives Synthetic cocaine-derived LAs differ from cocaine because they have a much lower abuse potential and do not cause hypertension vasoconstriction (with few exceptions). The suffix "-caine" at the ends of these medication names is derived from the word "cocaine", because cocaine was formerly used as a local anesthetic. Examples Short Duration of Actio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Analgesic
An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic, antalgic, pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of drugs used for pain management. Analgesics are conceptually distinct from anesthetics, which temporarily reduce, and in some instances eliminate, sensation, although analgesia and anesthesia are neurophysiologically overlapping and thus various drugs have both analgesic and anesthetic effects. Analgesic choice is also determined by the type of pain: For neuropathic pain, recent research has suggested that classes of drugs that are not normally considered analgesics, such as tricyclic antidepressants and anticonvulsants may be considered as an alternative. Various analgesics, such as many NSAIDs, are available over the counter in most countries, whereas various others are prescription drugs owing to the substantial risks and high chances of overdose, misuse, and addiction in the absence of medical supervision. Etymology The word ''analgesic'' derive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opioid Receptor
Opioid receptors are a group of inhibitory G protein-coupled receptors with opioids as ligands. The endogenous opioids are dynorphins, enkephalins, endorphins, endomorphins and nociceptin. The opioid receptors are ~40% identical to somatostatin receptors (SSTRs). Opioid receptors are distributed widely in the brain, in the spinal cord, on peripheral neurons, and digestive tract. Discovery By the mid-1960s, it had become apparent from pharmacologic studies that opioids were likely to exert their actions at specific receptor sites, and that there were likely to be multiple such sites. Early studies had indicated that opiates appeared to accumulate in the brain. The receptors were first identified as specific molecules through the use of binding studies, in which opiates that had been labeled with radioisotopes were found to bind to brain membrane homogenates. The first such study was published in 1971, using 3H- levorphanol. In 1973, Candace Pert and Solomon H. Snyder publi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Autotomy
Autotomy (from the Greek ''auto-'', "self-" and ''tome'', "severing", αὐτοτομία) or 'self-amputation', is the behaviour whereby an animal sheds or discards an appendage, usually as a self-defense mechanism to elude a predator's grasp or to distract the predator and thereby allow escape. Some animals are able to regenerate the lost body part later. Autotomy is thought to have evolved independently at least nine times. The term was coined in 1883 by Leon Fredericq. Vertebrates Reptiles and amphibians Some lizards, salamanders and tuatara when caught by the tail will shed part of it in attempting to escape. In many species the detached tail will continue to wriggle, creating a deceptive sense of continued struggle, and distracting the predator's attention from the fleeing prey animal. In addition, many species of lizards, such as '' Plestiodon fasciatus'', '' Cordylosaurus subtessellatus'', '' Holaspis guentheri'', '' Phelsuma barbouri'', and '' Ameiva wetmorei'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noxious Stimuli
A noxious stimulus is a stimulus strong enough to threaten the body's integrity (i.e. cause damage to tissue). Noxious stimulation induces peripheral afferents responsible for transducing pain (including A-delta and C- nerve fibers, as well as free nerve endings) throughout the nervous system of an organism. The ability to perceive noxious stimuli is a prerequisite for nociception, which itself is a prerequisite for nociceptive pain. A noxious stimulus has been seen to drive nocifensive behavioral responses, which are responses to noxious or painful stimuli. These include reflexive, escape behaviors, to avoid harm to an organism's body. Because of rare genetic conditions that inhibit the ability to perceive physical pain, such acongenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA) noxious stimulation does not invariably lead to tissue damage. Noxious stimuli can either be mechanical (e.g. pinching or other tissue deformation), chemical (e.g. exposure to acid or irr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sensory Receptor
Sensory neurons, also known as afferent neurons, are neurons in the nervous system, that convert a specific type of stimulus, via their receptors, into action potentials or graded receptor potentials. This process is called sensory transduction. The cell bodies of the sensory neurons are located in the dorsal root ganglia of the spinal cord. The sensory information travels on the afferent nerve fibers in a sensory nerve, to the brain via the spinal cord. Spinal nerves transmit external sensations via sensory nerves to the brain through the spinal cord. The stimulus can come from exteroreceptors outside the body, for example those that detect light and sound, or from interoreceptors inside the body, for example those that are responsive to blood pressure or the sense of body position. Types and function Sensory neurons in vertebrates are predominantly pseudounipolar or bipolar, and different types of sensory neurons have different sensory receptors that respond to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nervous System
In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes that impact the body, then works in tandem with the endocrine system to respond to such events. Nervous tissue first arose in Ediacara biota, wormlike organisms about 550 to 600 million years ago. In Vertebrate, vertebrates, it consists of two main parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists mainly of nerves, which are enclosed bundles of the long fibers, or axons, that connect the CNS to every other part of the body. Nerves that transmit signals from the brain are called motor nerves (efferent), while those nerves that transmit information from the body to the CNS are called sensory nerves (aff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxon
In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and given a particular ranking, especially if and when it is accepted or becomes established. It is very common, however, for taxonomists to remain at odds over what belongs to a taxon and the criteria used for inclusion, especially in the context of rank-based (" Linnaean") nomenclature (much less so under phylogenetic nomenclature). If a taxon is given a formal scientific name, its use is then governed by one of the nomenclature codes specifying which scientific name is correct for a particular grouping. Initial attempts at classifying and ordering organisms (plants and animals) were presumably set forth in prehistoric times by hunter-gatherers, as suggested by the fairly sophisticated folk taxonomies. Much later, Aristotle, and later st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physiology
Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organ (biology), organs, cell (biology), cells, and biomolecules carry out chemistry, chemical and physics, physical functions in a living system. According to the classes of organisms, the field can be divided into clinical physiology, medical physiology, Zoology#Physiology, animal physiology, plant physiology, cell physiology, and comparative physiology. Central to physiological functioning are biophysics, biophysical and biochemical processes, homeostasis, homeostatic control mechanisms, and cell signaling, communication between cells. ''Physiological state'' is the condition of normal function. In contrast, ''pathology, pathological state'' refers to abnormality (behavior), abnormal conditions, including human diseases. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
