Behavioural methods articles from across Nature Portfolio

Researchers have developed a cost-effective, noninvasive method for determining torpor-bout duration in heterothermic mammals. They used the paper towel shredding behavior of ground squirrels to detect 59 arousals with 100% accuracy over 52 days. This method avoids the drawbacks of other cheap monitoring systems such as the sawdust technique.

Experiences of objects and features are biased to appear more like previously seen stimuli than they really are. In this Perspective, Manassi and Whitney describe this phenomenon of positive serial dependence and propose continuity fields as the underlying mechanism.

Establishing causality is crucial to understanding the mechanisms that underlie effective treatments for mental health disorders. Virtual reality environments enable manipulation and control of participants’ attributes in a therapeutic session, which could potentially revolutionize research on mechanisms of change.

No, we are not talking about a new dish for dinner, but a study representing an emerging research field. Psilocybin research is gaining momentum, and zebrafish behavioral neuroscience research has been exponentially expanding. At the intersection of these two research fields is a recent paper that utilized high-tech video-tracking to detect behavioral changes induced by this psychoactive drug in larval zebrafish.