Human-introduced long-term traditions in wild redfronted lemurs?

Behavioural traditions have only been described for a small subset of species, and the factors responsible for the maintenance of traditions over time are unclear. Redfronted lemurs are known to learn socially but traditions have not been described in the wild. We conducted a social diffusion experiment over three experimental years with artificial feeding boxes that could be opened in two different ways (pushing or pulling a door). Six out of 14 individuals that participated in at least 2 years exhibited a stable preference: five lemurs maintained a pull and one lemur a push preference, suggesting that habit formation and reinforcement learning may have lead to preferences over time. The remaining individuals exhibited fluctuating preferences and switched between showing a preference or no preference, but never switched between preferences. This instability might have been due to the low level of difficulty and/or the low object specificity of the task. The majority of lemurs additionally scrounged. Scrounging was not influenced by age, sex or success in manipulating the boxes. Thus, redfronted lemurs appear to use the two techniques flexibly but also scrounged opportunistically to get access to the rewards, indicating that traditions might be stabilized by multiple factors.     

Psychoedukation – zusammen weniger allein

Das Anbieten psychoedukativer Trainingsprogramme ist State-of-the-Art der medizinisch-therapeutischen Behandlung von Menschen mit psychischen St?rungen. Psychoedukation sollte gleich zu Beginn der psychischen Erkrankung erfolgen und auch den Angeh?rigen oder nahen Bezugspersonen erm?glicht werden. Erwiesenerma?en ist eine Kombination aus Medikamenten und den Gruppenangeboten Psychoedukation sowie Selbsthilfe am erfolgversprechendsten für den Krankheitsverlauf. Durch psychoedukative Trainingsprogramme wird nicht nur die Lebensqualit?t der Patienten gef?rdert, sondern auch das Wissen um die Erkrankung und ihre Früherkennung. Die Patienten lernen in der Psychoedukation wie sie bei einer drohenden Wiedererkrankung reagieren mussen, um diese rasch abzufangen. Die Wichtigkeit der verschiedenen psychoedukativen Trainingsprogramme für einen günstigen Krankheitsverlauf wurde in zahlreichen Studien untersucht und immer wieder best?tigt.     

Medikamentöse Epilepsietherapie – ein Fallbericht

With a prevalence of 0.8?% epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders. Antiepileptic drugs form the main pillar for the therapy of epilepsy. The aim of therapy includes highly optimized seizure control and absence of adverse events. Since the 1990s many new antiepileptic drugs have been developed which helps to create an individually adapted drug regime for every patient. Presenting a short case report of a woman with secondarily generalized epilepsy we describe our considerations concerning the choice of drugs.