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Alcohol and Decision-Making
LYGA, Michal
The bachelor thesis Alcohol and Decision-Making deals with various psychological theories exploring the influence of alcohol on the behavior and decision-making of an individual focusing on a phenomenon called Alcohol Myopia Effect (AME). The aim of this theoretical work is to describe from different points of view how alcohol affects the organism and the psyche of a man and how it changes his usual way of decision-making. The main part of the thesis is devoted to the AME theory which suggests that an intoxicated individual has a significantly narrowed his cognitive functions and thus important inhibiting cues are lost from his perception range and therefore may the individual behave in more risky or deviant way. The AME theory is discussed from several points of view and is compared with alternative theories examining the effects of alcohol on individual decision-making.
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Beneficial Effects of 11β-HSD1 Inhibition on Cognitive Performance in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease
Červinková, Tereza ; Červený, Lukáš (advisor) ; Musílek, Kamil (referee)
Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology Candidate: Tereza Červinková Supervisor: PharmDr. Lukáš Červený, Ph.D. Title: Beneficial Effects of 11β-HSD1 Inhibition on Cognitive Performance in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease The increased life expectancy goes hand in hand with ageing-related cognitive impairments. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia being an irreversible and progressive brain disorder with loss of cognitive functions. Recent studies suggest that excess of glucocorticoid (GC) action exerts deleterious effects on the hippocampus and causes impaired spatialmemory. In addition, it has been demonstrated that aged mice with cognitive deficits show increased gene expression of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) in the hippocampus and parietal cortex. The Senescence-Accelerated Mouse Prone 8 (SAMP8) strain is a spontaneous animal model of accelerated ageing. Many studies indicate that SAMP8 harbour the behavioural and histopathological signatures of AD. In the present study, we evaluated the neuroprotective effects of 11β-HSD1 inhibition by a potent pyrrolidine-based compound RL-118 and/or effects of diet on cognitive performance in different groups of SAMP8 by conducting behavioural and...
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Beneficial Effects of 11β-HSD1 Inhibition on Cognitive Performance in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease
Červinková, Tereza ; Červený, Lukáš (advisor) ; Musílek, Kamil (referee)
Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology Candidate: Tereza Červinková Supervisor: PharmDr. Lukáš Červený, Ph.D. Title: Beneficial Effects of 11β-HSD1 Inhibition on Cognitive Performance in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer's Disease The increased life expectancy goes hand in hand with ageing-related cognitive impairments. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia being an irreversible and progressive brain disorder with loss of cognitive functions. Recent studies suggest that excess of glucocorticoid (GC) action exerts deleterious effects on the hippocampus and causes impaired spatialmemory. In addition, it has been demonstrated that aged mice with cognitive deficits show increased gene expression of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (11β-HSD1) in the hippocampus and parietal cortex. The Senescence-Accelerated Mouse Prone 8 (SAMP8) strain is a spontaneous animal model of accelerated ageing. Many studies indicate that SAMP8 harbour the behavioural and histopathological signatures of AD. In the present study, we evaluated the neuroprotective effects of 11β-HSD1 inhibition by a potent pyrrolidine-based compound RL-118 and/or effects of diet on cognitive performance in different groups of SAMP8 by conducting behavioural and...
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Inter-individual differences in behaviour of laboratory rats
Rudolfová, Veronika ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Sedláček, František (referee)
Number of studies report that even when experimental animals are subjected to the exact same conditions, they differ in their behaviour. If these differences were stable in time and across several experimental procedures, we could talk about personality. This diploma thesis studies inter-individual differences in behaviour of laboratory rats (Long Evans strain) in a series of experiments conducted in early ontogeny and in adult age. Apart from analysing inter-individual differences in behaviour and personality of experimental animals, this thesis has two main aims. The first aim is assessing stability of inter-individual differences in behaviour throughout ontogeny. The second aim is to explore possible link between inter-individual differences in behaviour and performance in cognitive tests. We confirmed the existence of inter-individual difference in behaviour in laboratory rats. In this thesis we were, however, not able to assess personality of experimental animals. The differences in behaviour were best described by behaviour in Open field test and Elevated plus maze test. Our results also show marked differences between successive trials of these experiments. We also report that performance in Active allothetic place avoidance is not linked to performance in Morris water maze, even though both...
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Reference meaning of words in human-dog communication
Stemmerová, Lucia ; Lindová, Jitka (advisor) ; Santariová, Milena (referee)
In recent twenty years dogs have become model subjects of comparing studies. These experiments show us that specific cognitive skills have developed during their domestication as an adaptation to anthropomorphic environment. For example dogs can follow human gaze and understand gestures. An important topic of today researches are linguistic skills of dogs. Knowledge from this area would help to discover more from evolution processes which formed human language. Last studies have proven dogs can distinguish a new object by a fast mapping. But when distinguishing two new objects, dogs had problems. That is why I decided to verify if dogs are able to remember two new words and match them with correct objects during one session. For this experiment I worked on a new methodical procedure and used three border collies dogs. The results showed that after some training dogs were able to correctly distinguish two new words in case the experimentalist stood in front of them and they used multisenzorial perception. In case they had only one communication source (visual or acoustic), they made more mistakes. The results show that functional reactions of dogs to human vocalization are getting better if they can use visual and acoustic source in one time during an interspecies communication. Key words: dog,...
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The impact of nature on human health and development
Antošová, Eliška ; Vomáčko, Ladislav (advisor) ; Turčová, Ivana (referee)
Title: The Impact of Nature on Human Health and Development Objectives: The main aim of this bachelor thesis was to do a detail research of foreign scientific articles concerning effects of nature on human health and development of individual. Methods: To do the desk research of academic literature, the databases of foreign scientific articles such as PubMed, Medline, Scopus have been used. Results: There are studies which focus on influence of environment on people and examine this influence on three levels: physiological, psychological and cognitive. Results show a potential effect of natural environment on people on all researched levels. Studies describe this effect of environment as restorative and is commonly explained by two major theories: 1) Attention Restoration Theory explains this restorative effect by regeneration of directed attention capacity. 2) Stress Recovery Theory explains the restorative effect like a positive influence on emotional state of an individual. This has a positive consequence in lowering stress levels of the individual and it also induces desired physiological processes which lead to relaxation, regeneration and release. Furthermore, the studies show that there is significant role of environment in the overall development of an individual and they mention negative...
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Association between olfactory and cognitive abilities in elderly individuals
Babuská, Anna ; Havlíček, Jan (advisor) ; Vodička, Jan (referee)
During the process of aging, the human mental and physical abilities decline. Olfactory abilities are not an exception. A significant decrease of olfactory capabilities in patients with Parkinson's disease was firstly observed a few decades ago. After the discovery of the relationship between olfactory abilities and cognitive abilities in patients with neurodegenerative disease, the same relationship was also found in healthy aging people. It seems that the factors causing the decline of cognition foremost affect the olfactory functions. A number of studies suggests, that this could lead to a possibility of prediction of the future cognitive decline through the assessment of olfactory decline. Our research followed the results of these studies as a part of the NANOK study. Testing of the smell abilities was done in 2014 and 2015. Participants were screened with the Sniffin 'Sticks. Cognitive functions were tested with an extensive battery of cognitive tests. The processiong of data was divided into two parts. In the first part we tested the olfactory identification and discrimination relationship with the general cognitive abilities and the level of the executive functions. In the second part we tested the possibility of prediction of cognitive functions using the smell identification and discrimination...
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