Examining psychosocial pathways to explain the link between breastfeeding practices and child behaviour in a longitudinal cohort.

OBJECTIVE: Breastfeeding is associated with reduced postpartum depression, stronger parent-child relationships, and fewer behavioral disorders in early childhood. We tested the mediating roles of postpartum depression and parent-child relationship in the association between breastfeeding practices and child behavior. STUDY DESIGN: We used standardized questionnaire data from a subset of the CHILD Cohort Study (n = 1,573) to measure postpartum depression at 6 months, 1 year and 2 years, parent-child relationship 1 year and 2 years, and child behavior at 5 years using the Child Behavior Checklist (range 0-100). Breastfeeding practices were measured at 3 months (none, partial, some expressed, all direct at the breast), 6 months (none, partial, exclusive), 12 months, and 24 months (no, yes). Confounders included birth factors, maternal characteristics, and socioeconomic status. RESULTS: Breast milk feeding at 3 or 6 months was associated with - 1.13 (95% CI: -2.19-0.07) to -2.14 (95% CI: -3.46, -0.81) lower (better) child behavior scores. Reduced postpartum depression at 6 months mediated between 11.5% and 16.6% of the relationship between exclusive breast milk feeding at 3 months and better child behavior scores. Together, reduced postpartum depression at 1 year and reduced parent-child dysfunction at 2 years mediated between 21.9% and 32.1% of the relationship between breastfeeding at 12 months and better child behavior scores. CONCLUSION: Postpartum depression and parent-child relationship quality partially mediate the relationship between breastfeeding practices and child behavior. Breastfeeding, as well as efforts to support parental mental health and parent-child relationships, may help to improve child behavior.

Primates and disability: Behavioral flexibility and implications for resilience to environmental change.

Congenital malformations, conditions, injuries, and illness can lead to long-term physical impairment and disability in nonhuman primates. How individual primates change their behaviors flexibly to compensate for their disabilities can inform our understanding of their resilience and ability to adjust to environmental change. Here, we synthesize the literature on nonhuman primates and disability, addressing the questions: how does disability influence behavior in primates? What insights can we take from the literature to better understand and predict the capacity of primates to modify their behaviors in the face of human-induced environmental change? We conducted a systematic review of the literature on spontaneous physical impairment and disability in captive, free-ranging, and wild primates. We surveyed 2807 articles on Web of Science and Scopus and identified 114 studies that fit our predetermined inclusion criteria. Behavioral plasticity, maternal and conspecific care, and the potential for innovation of novel behaviors allow many primates with disabilities to compensate when faced with challenges that are outside the scope of usual circumstances. We also found that 60% of the publications connected primate physical impairment and disability to human activities, suggesting an entangled relationship among humans, the environment, and primate disability. Disability and physical impairments provide an opportunity to examine how primates modify their behavior when presented with challenging conditions, and their potential resilience to a changing environment.

Validating existing clinical cut-points for the parent-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire in a large sample of Canadian children and youth. / Validation des seuils cliniques dans la version remplie par les parents du Questionnaire sur les points forts et les points faibles au sein d'un vaste échantillon d'enfants et de jeunes canadiens.

INTRODUCTION: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), for assessing behavioural and emotional difficulties, has been used internationally as a screening measure for mental health problems. Our objective was to validate the existing (British) SDQ cut-points in a sample of Canadian children and youth, and develop new Canadian SDQ cut-points if needed. METHODS: This study includes data from children and youth aged 6 to 17 years from the Canadian Health Measures Survey (n = 3435) and outpatient records from the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (n = 1075). The parent-reported SDQ data were collected. We adjusted the existing SDQ cut-points using a distributional and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve approach. We subsequently calculated the sensitivity, specificity and diagnostic odds ratio of the existing and new SDQ clinical cut-points to determine whether the new cut-points had better clinical utility, using both analytic approaches. RESULTS: Our data show differences in the screening effectiveness between the existing British and the Canadian-specific clinical cut-points. Specificity is maximized using the Canadian distributional cut-points, improving the likelihood of identifying true negative results. The total SDQ score met the threshold for clinical utility (diagnostic odds ratio > 20) using both the existing and new cut-points; however, the individual scales did not reach clinical utility threshold using either cut-points. CONCLUSIONS: Future Canadian SDQ research should consider the new cut-points derived from our study population and the existing British cut-points to allow for historical and international comparisons.

No food left behind: foraging route choices among free-ranging Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) in a multi-destination array at the Awajishima Monkey Center, Japan.

Animals must make route choices every day when moving through their habitat while foraging. Choosing an optimal route can be cognitively costly, and primates and other animals have been shown to use simple heuristics, "rules of thumb", to make foraging route choices. We investigated the potential use of heuristics among foraging free-ranging Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata) during solitary foraging trials. We also investigated the potential influence of individual variables (age and sex) and social variables (presence in the central group, presence of potential inter- and intraspecific competitors), on the use of heuristics, route length and trial time. We used a multi-destination foraging experiment with 6 platforms in a (4 m × 8 m) Z-array, completed by 29 Japanese macaques in 155 runs at the Awajishima Monkey Center in Japan. Our results showed that the macaques chose routes consistent with heuristics (e.g. nearest neighbour heuristic 19.4%, convex hull heuristic 4.5%) and selected optimal routes (shortest path in 23.9% of the trials). We also identified a potential new heuristic that was used most frequently, that we termed the "sweep heuristic" (27.1% of trials), which we interpreted as a strategy to deal with competitive foraging trade-offs - choosing routes to prioritize not leaving isolated food pieces behind. Age was significantly related to trial time; juvenile macaques were faster than adults and young adults, using speed to gain access to resources. Solitary trials with conspecifics present took significantly longer routes. Our results suggest that contextual factors led to variation in Japanese macaque decision-making, and we suggest that the preferential use of a sweep heuristic may have been a response to high intragroup competition.

Mothers of disabled infants had higher cortisol levels in a free-ranging group of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata).

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are hormones released in response to stressors and can provide insight into an organism's physiological well-being. Experiencing chronic challenges to homeostasis is associated with significant deviations from baseline fecal GCs (fGCs) in many species, providing a noninvasive biomarker for assessing stress. In the group of free-ranging Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) at the Awajishima Monkey Center in Japan, ~17% have congenital limb malformations. We collected 646 fecal samples from 27 females over three consecutive birth seasons (May-August) and analyzed them using enzyme immunoassay to extract fGCs. We explored the relationship between fGC levels and individual (physical impairment and reproductive status), social (dominance rank and availability of kin for social support), and ecological variables (exposure to potential predators, rainfall, and wild fruit availability). A disabled infant was associated significantly with higher fGC in the mother; however, physical impairment in adult females was not significantly related to fGC levels. Females with higher dominance rank had significantly lower fGC levels than lower ranking females. Other factors did not relate significantly to fGC. These results suggest that providing care that meets the support needs of disabled infants poses a physiological challenge for mothers and suggests that physically impaired adults are able to effectively compensate for their disabilities with behavioral plasticity. Once an individual with congenital limb malformations survives infancy through their mother's care, physical impairment does not appear to influence fGC values, while social variables like dominance rank significantly influenced cortisol values in free-ranging female Japanese macaques.

Breastfeeding in the pandemic: A qualitative analysis of breastfeeding experiences among mothers from Canada and the United Kingdom.

BACKGROUND: Previous research shows that the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in both barriers and facilitators to breastfeeding. However, little research has looked specifically at first-time mothers' experiences of breastfeeding during the pandemic or compared experiences of mothers living in different countries. AIM: This research explores mothers' breastfeeding experiences to describe how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected breastfeeding journeys in Canada and the United Kingdom. METHODS: Ten semi-structured online interviews were undertaken with first-time mothers who breastfed their baby at least once during the COVID-19 pandemic and are living in Canada or the United Kingdom. Interview transcripts were coded inductively using thematic analysis. FINDINGS: One overarching theme (all on mother) and four sub-themes were identified: 1) accessing and advocating for health care, 2) social support, 3) becoming a mother in isolation, and 4) breastfeeding baby. Similar themes were constructed for both countries. DISCUSSION: Mothers reported that diminished health care and social support created challenges in their breastfeeding journey. Many mothers reported receiving virtual breastfeeding support, which was largely experienced as unhelpful. Some mothers reported fewer distractions from visitors and more one-on-one time with their infant, which helped them to establish breastfeeding and a strong mother-infant bond. CONCLUSION: In both Canada and the United Kingdom, new mothers need consistent, reliable health care and social support when breastfeeding. This study supports the need to protect breastfeeding support in the midst of a global emergency and beyond to ensure positive breastfeeding experiences for both mother and baby.

Mild movement sequence repetition in five primate species and evidence for a taxonomic divide in cognitive mechanisms.

When animals forage, they face complex multi-destination routing problems. Traplining behaviour-the repeated use of the same route-can be used to study how spatial memory might evolve to cope with complex routing problems in ecologically distinct taxa. We analyzed experimental data from multi-destination foraging arrays for five species, two cercopithecine monkeys (vervets, Chlorocebus pygerythrus, and Japanese macaques, Macaca fuscata) and three strepsirrhines (fat-tailed dwarf lemurs, Cheirogaleus medius, grey mouse lemurs, Microcebus murinus, and aye-ayes, Daubentonia madagascariensis). These species all developed relatively efficient route formations within the arrays but appeared to rely on variable cognitive mechanisms. We found a strong reliance on heuristics in cercopithecoid species, with initial routes that began near optimal and did not improve with experience. In strepsirrhines, we found greater support for reinforcement learning of location-based decisions, such that routes improved with experience. Further, we found evidence of repeated sequences of site visitation in all species, supporting previous suggestions that primates form traplines. However, the recursive use of routes was weak, differing from the strategies seen in well-known traplining animals. Differences between strepsirrhine and cercopithecine strategies may be the result of either ecological or phylogenetic trends, and we discuss future possibilities for disentangling the two.

Social grooming efficiency and techniques are influenced by manual impairment in free-ranging Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata).

Animals born with physical impairments may particularly require behavioural flexibility and innovation to survive and carry out social activities, such as grooming. Studies on free-ranging Japanese macaques on Awaji Island, Japan, have shown that individuals with congenital limb malformations exhibited compensatory behaviours while grooming, such as increased mouth and elbow use for removing ectoparasites. The aim of this study is to explore disabled and nondisabled grooming techniques to determine whether and to what extent disabled monkeys develop novel grooming techniques, and if there is disability-associated variation in grooming efficiency. We hypothesized that modified grooming techniques used by disabled monkeys fulfilled the social and relaxing functions of grooming, however, that grooming by manually impaired individuals may still carry a hygienic cost to the recipients. Grooming behavioural data were collected by video in 2007 on 27 adult females (11 with CLMs). With a detailed grooming-related ethogram, we transcribed 216 2-minute continuous grooming video samples. We analyzed the data using generalized linear mixed effects models in R. We found that monkeys with manual impairment were less efficient groomers, as measured by removal and movement efficiency during grooming. However, there were no significant differences associated with the number of grooming movements per sample among the focal animals. Additionally, with a behavioural sequential analysis, we isolated 8 distinct grooming techniques and 3 novel disability-specific movements. Our results indicate that innovation and modification of movement types does not entirely compensate for manual disability, and that manual impairment carries a cost to the hygienic function of grooming. However, for the grooming recipient, the experience of being groomed by a disabled or nondisabled groomer is likely similar, and through movement compensation, disabled monkeys are able to engage in the social aspect of grooming without incurring any disability-associated costs.

Molecular Pharmacology of Phytocannabinoids.

Cannabis sativa has been used for recreational, therapeutic and other uses for thousands of years. The plant contains more than 120 C21 terpenophenolic constituents named phytocannabinoids. The Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol type class of phytocannabinoids comprises the largest proportion of the phytocannabinoid content. Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol was first discovered in 1971. This led to the discovery of the endocannabinoid system in mammals, including the cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2. Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol exerts its well-known psychotropic effects through the CB1 receptor but this effect of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol has limited the use of cannabis medicinally, despite the therapeutic benefits of this phytocannabinoid. This has driven research into other targets outside the endocannabinoid system and has also driven research into the other non-psychotropic phytocannabinoids present in cannabis. This chapter presents an overview of the molecular pharmacology of the seven most thoroughly investigated phytocannabinoids, namely Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabivarin, cannabinol, cannabidiol, cannabidivarin, cannabigerol, and cannabichromene. The targets of these phytocannabinoids are defined both within the endocannabinoid system and beyond. The pharmacological effect of each individual phytocannabinoid is important in the overall therapeutic and recreational effect of cannabis and slight structural differences can elicit diverse and competing physiological effects. The proportion of each phytocannabinoid can be influenced by various factors such as growing conditions and extraction methods. It is therefore important to investigate the pharmacology of these seven phytocannabinoids further, and characterise the large number of other phytocannabinoids in order to better understand their contributions to the therapeutic and recreational effects claimed for the whole cannabis plant and its extracts.

Social consequences of disability in a nonhuman primate.

Debates about the likelihood of conspecific care for disabled individuals in ancestral hominins rely on evidence from extant primates, yet little is known about social treatment (positive, neutral or negative) of physically disabled individuals in nonhuman primates. A group of free-ranging Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) at the Awajishima Monkey Center (AMC) in Japan presents a unique opportunity to investigate the relationships between physical impairment and social behavior, in the context of congenital limb malformation in adult nonhuman primates. We collected behavioral data on 23 focal animals, taking 30-minute continuous time samples on disabled and nondisabled adult female Japanese macaques during three consecutive birth seasons (May-August 2005, 2006, and 2007). Disabled females were less social overall compared with nondisabled controls, a pattern that was evident from a variety of measures. Disabled females rested significantly more and socialized significantly less compared with controls, had fewer adult female affiliates, fewer adult female grooming partners, and spent less time engaged in grooming with adult females. Some measures suggested that the social differences were the result of behavioral flexibility on the part of disabled females compensating for their disabilities with lower levels of social involvement and more rest. Disabled females were as successful at groom solicitations as were nondisabled females and the ratio of disabled and nondisabled affiliates was similar among focal animals; there was no strong preference related to the disability status of affiliates. Disabled females were also bitten and chased less frequently. Overall, there was little evidence either for conspecific care or for social selection against disability. In general, there was a socially neutral response to disability, and while neutral social context allows for the possibility of care behaviors, our findings emphasize the self-reliant abilities of these disabled primates and suggest caution when inferring conspecific care for even very disabled ancestral humans.

Disability, compensatory behavior, and innovation in free-ranging adult female Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata).

Little is known about consequences of disability in nonhuman primates, yet individuals with disabilities can reveal much about behavioral flexibility, innovation, and the capabilities of a species. The Macaca fuscata population surrounding the Awajishima Monkey Center has experienced high rates of congenital limb malformation for at least 40 years, creating a unique opportunity to examine consequences of physical impairment in situ, in a relatively large sample of free-ranging adult monkeys. Here we present behavioral data on 11 disabled adult females and 12 nondisabled controls from 279 hours of randomly ordered 30-minute focal animal follows collected during May-August in 2005, 2006, and 2007. We quantified numerous statistically significant disability-related behavioral differences among females. Disabled females spent less time begging for peanuts from tourists, and employed a behavioral variant of such peanut begging; they had a lower frequency of hand use in grooming and compensated with increased direct use of the mouth or a two-arm pinch technique; and they had a higher frequency of self-scratching, and more use of feet in self-scratching. Self-scratching against substrates was almost exclusively a disability associated behavior. Two females used habitual bipedalism. These differences not withstanding, disabled females behaved similarly to controls in many respects: overall reliance on provisioned and wild foods, time spent feeding, and feeding efficiency did not differ among females, and there was no time difference in behavior performed arboreally or terrestrially. Disabled adult females were able to compensate behaviorally to perform social and life-sustaining activities, modifying existing behaviors to suit their individual physical situations and, occasionally, inventing new ways of doing things.

Monkeys with disabilities: prevalence and severity of congenital limb malformations in Macaca fuscata on Awaji Island.

The Awajishima Monkey Center (AMC) free-ranging, provisioned population of Japanese macaques has included individuals with congenital limb malformations (CLMs) for at least 40 years. Including new data from this study, 16.1% of AMC infants from 1969 to 2007 (185 of 1,150) were born with CLMs. However, relatively little is known about the demographics of CLMs in the population, particularly the relationships among occurrence and severity of CLMs and age-sex demographics after infancy. In 2004, we conducted a census at AMC. Of the 199 monkeys censused, 34 individuals (17.1%) had CLMs. To estimate the severity of CLMs, we created an index that ranks individuals on a scale of 0 to 1 based on affected and absent limbs and digits. The severity of CLMs varied greatly (index range = 0.01-0.79, mean = 0.29), with similar variation in severity in each age-sex class (Student t-test, P > 0.05).