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Ontogeny of neural mechanisms of episodic memory
Šafová, Lucie ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Blahna, Karel (referee)
Two brain structures in particular - the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) - are essential for episodic memory, the ability to recall personal experiences with details of time, place, and event. It is their developmental changes that contribute significantly to the progressive development of episodic memory. The hippocampus is a complex structure composed of several subregions that is crucial to the function of the neural basis of episodic memory. Findings show that both neuronal changes within the hippocampus and changes in its volume and the volume of hippocampal subfields influence episodic memory. As in the hippocampus, changes in the prefrontal cortex also affect episodic memory, with the PFC being among the last regions to fully mature and affecting the accuracy of recalling contextual details of episodic memories. The transfer of information between brain regions is also crucial for episodic memories, and is provided by white matter connections (fornix, cingulum, uncinate fasciculus). This thesis summarizes the knowledge about the structures and mechanisms involved in the development of episodic memory and mentions the factors that influence its development. Keywords: episodic memory, ontogeny, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, synaptic plasticity
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triggers of asexual reproduction: on the crosslink between hybridization, asexuality, polyploidy and speciation on example of Cobitidae loaches
Marta, Anatolie ; Janko, Karel (advisor) ; Arai, Katsutoshi (referee) ; Trachtulec, Zdeněk (referee)
(in English) Sexual reproduction is considered a nearly universal feature of all eukaryotic organisms and has been hypothesized to be their ancestral state. Sexual reproduction is mainly represented by meiotic division, recombination, production of haploid gametes and fertilization. Although molecular and cytological mechanisms underlying meiosis are highly conservative they may be disrupted in numerous ways leading to the emergence of so-called asexual lineages. The proximate origins of asexuality may differ for particular taxa. In vertebrates, asexuality frequently is triggered by interspecific hybridization. Nowadays "classical" theories predict that asexuals should not be able to persist on a long-term evolutionary scale. However, the hybrid lineages have to overcome short-term disadvantages, such as postzygotic barriers ranging from complete hybrid sterility to altered meiosis resulting in asexual reproduction and even ploidy elevation. Despite that hybrid sterility is one of the most common outcomes of interspecific hybridization, however various lineages found their ways to alleviate these problems and produce viable clonal gametes. The knowledge about proximate mechanisms of unreduced gamete formation in asexual lineages is very limited as many studies were restricted due to methodological...
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Using games and contests in English language teaching at elementary school level.
NOVOTNÝ, Kryštof
Abstract This Diploma Thesis deals with using games and competitions in teaching of English for the first level of primary schools. The aim of the thesis is to characterize the role of the game in English language teaching and its possible use in order to develop key language skills. The theoretical part deals with the psychological characteristics of the younger school age, then the theory of play and the developmental stages of children's play. In the last part of the thesis, there are described the different types of didactic games. The practical part consists of two parts. The first part presents didactic games, that are properly commented in terms of general educational and language objectives. Each of them was taught and reflected in terms of its effectiveness. The second chapter of the practical part presents the results of the research, which was conducted in the form of a guided interview with English language teachers at the elementary school, dealing with their experience in using English language lessons at primary school.
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Ontogeny of soldier behaviour and its polyethism in termites
Homolka, Petr ; Šobotník, Jan (advisor) ; Frouz, Jan (referee)
The presence of soldier caste is an important synapomorphy of group Isoptera. The adaptation of this caste to defense tasks is more than obvious and some of their morphological or even behavioral adaptations can be quite impressive. The polyethism in termites is relatively well known inbetween rather worker caste. If there are such a studies pointing at polyethism in soldiers, they are connected with soldier polymorphism. The morphological differences are of course important stimulus to role separation. The goal of this thesis was to examine the polyethism in the species of the termite with monomorphic soldiers - Prorhinotermes simplex. I did behavioral experiments with it in enclosed arenas, recorded on specific days. The data shows, that there are differences inbetween individuals and it would be benefical to invest further time to subsequent studies. The thesis bring out new point of view to defensive behaviour of termites and suggests, that even termite species without polymorphic species may have soldiers with different tasks. Besides I managed to map ontogeny of soldier behaviour in the first two weeks after moulting from presoldier instar. Key words: Isoptera, polyethism, soldiers, ontogeny, defensive behaviour Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Factors influencing intraspecific scaling of metabolic rate
Trubelová, Zuzana ; Starostová, Zuzana (advisor) ; Storch, David (referee)
The relationship between metabolic rate and animal body size of the animal has been studied for more than hundred years. Recently, attention of scientists moved from the interspecific to the intraspecific level. The work focuses on the intraspecific scaling of metabolism. When plotting the metabolic rate against body mass during ontogeny the resulting line often exhibits one or more breaks. Why these breaks (and thus reduction the metabolic rate) occur hasn't been fully explained. It is assumed that can be due to certain factors that affect an individual during development. Some of these factors came from the most famous of several hypotheses attempting to explain the scaling of metabolic rate. These hypotheses include the Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE), the Metabolic Level Boundaries (MLB), the Cell model and the Dynamic Energy Budget (DEB) hypothesis. There are several factors that could affect individuals during ontogeny. These include internal factors, which result from the internal processes within the body. These factors are often interrelated with each other in different ways; therefore, it is unlikely to choose only one particular factor which affects metabolic rate. The most frequently studied factors are changes of cell size and changes in the proportion of metabolically active...
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Ontogenesis of episodic memory in preschool children
Píšová, Martina ; Nekovářová, Tereza (advisor) ; Petrásek, Tomáš (referee)
Episodic memory enables us to remember and recall life events from the past. Episodic memory is a specific type of long-term declarative memory, which undergoes changes in ontogeny. To examinate of episodic memory, "episodic-like memory model", was developed. This model focuses on three basic components of episodic memory: "What happened", "Where did it happen" and "When did it happen". The aim of this diploma thesis is to develop and to validate of particular tests of episodic memory with consideration for their feasibility for preschool children. In order to study episodic memory we used an "episodic-like memory model" and experiments which focused on: children's verbal ability, differentiation of two perspectives during remembering of events and timing memories on an autobiographical axis. We aimed to inspect the effect of age on performance in these tests, possible links between performance in these experiments and the effect of level and the three components of episodic memory on number of errors made. In our dataset we found a significant effect of the age of children in Sentence repetition test and in test of Object collection in the virtual house, in the same test we found a effect of the level on number of errors. We also found a significant correlation between correct responses in verbal...
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Evaluation of ontogenetic development of the mandible using geometric morphometric methods
Kiebelová, Alena ; Velemínská, Jana (advisor) ; Brůžek, Jaroslav (referee)
During ontogeny there are a lot of changes in the entire human skeleton. This thesis deals with shape changes in the mandible, which are caused by genetic, hormonal, as well as mechanical factors. The most important mechanical factors influencing the shape of mandible are development of deciduous and permanent dentition and also development of masticatory muscles. 34 children mandibles of known age and 14 adult mandibles were analysed and compared for this thesis. Data were obtained by scanning coordinates of 36 landmarks using Microscribe G2X, and then were processed by software PAST and Morphologika2 using multivariate statistics (PCA, MANOVA). Geometric morphometrics is used for a detailed analysis of shape changes of the mandible. There is no difference between dental and chronological age. In conclusion, lower jaw narrows during growth, the body extends more in the region of third molars and the ramus grows mainly in the region of condylar process. Chin prominence also occurs during ontogeny. In the group of adult mandibles the variability is caused by coronoid process height and the body width. The hypothesis, that age groups are significantly different from each other, and therefore due to tooth mineralization there are marked shape changes, is confirmed.
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Growth and sexual selection in selected representatives of scarabaeoid beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea).
Vendl, Tomáš ; Šípek, Petr (advisor) ; Knapp, Michal (referee) ; Skuhrovec, Jiří (referee)
Flower chafers are well-known beetles with apparent sexual dimorphism. Yet, in contrast to other groups of scarab beetles, only little attention has been paid to various aspects of this phenomenon. It concerns also sexual dimorphism in size, which is very common in animals. Although ultimate causes of sexual size dimorphism have been extensively studied, the developmental mechanisms are still only poorly understood. We investigated proximate causes of sexual size dimorphism in several differentially dimorphic flower chafer species. We found that in highly dimorphic species the dimorphism started to develop already in the first instar and tended to accumulate through successive larval development. In contrast, the sexes in species with a relatively low dimorphism diverged in size during only one instar. Moreover, we found variability not only in when the dimorphism arises during development, but also how: sex-related differences in both the instar duration and average growth rate were the proximate causes of sexual size dimorphism. In addition, we showed that the sexes may differ also in growth trajectory - males had relatively longer period of rapid growth than females, even in cases where the absolute development times were similar in both sexes. Further, we focused on systematic survey of sexual...
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Intraindividual comparison of selected indicators of coordinating steps on the skating step and on the in-line step
Hospůdka, Jakub ; Kračmar, Bronislav (advisor) ; Süss, Vladimír (referee)
4 Summary: Title: Intraindividual comparison of selected indicators of coordinating steps on the ice skating and in-line. Objective: Assessment of coordination relationship rate of the skating forward during ice hockey and inline skating. Methods: Surface electromyography combinated with kinematography analysis used synchronized video recording. Results: Kinesiological content of movement during ice skating and inline skating is not the same. The general stereotype of the skating step is significantly different from the walking stereotype. Key words: human locomotion, sport locomotion, phylogeny, ontogeny, surface electromyography, ice hockey skating, inline skating.
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Organic memory in embryonic development
Švorcová, Jana ; Markoš, Anton (advisor) ; Černý, Robert (referee) ; Kull, Kalevi (referee)
The submitted thesis deals with the topic of organic memory, its definition and function, as well as its conceptions from various historical points of view. I use the term "organic memory" in respect to some authors who have previously dealt with this subject (Elsasser 1987, Otis 1994, Barbieri 2003) and also as a term by which to represent a kind of memory distinct from neuronal/cerebral memory. The general memory metaphors (in the case of neuronal memory) are essentially connected with terms such as storage, matrix, or place. For rather materialistic conception of memory, it is also symptomatic that different states such as emotions or mental faculties can be concretely localized in the brain tissue. On the contrary, some philosophers described memory as a primarily temporal entity without connection to place or matter. The question of organic memory was already vivid in 19th century biology, linked to Lamarckian philosophy (Hering 1870, Haeckel 1876, Butler 1910). The organic memory ideas floundered between vitalistic and rather materialistic conceptions: the first attributed some psychological features to cells or memory particles; the second was based on physics or in Cartesian doctrine, and described memory as essentially localized as a kind of storage of traces or patterns of physical waves....
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