Of mice and men--universality and breakdown of behavioral organization.

ABSTRACT: Mental or cognitive brain functions, and the effect on them of abnormal psychiatric diseases, are difficult to approach through molecular biological techniques due to the lack of appropriate assay systems with objective measures. We therefore study laws of behavioral organization, specifically how resting and active periods are interwoven throughout daily life, using objective criteria, and first discover that identical laws hold both for healthy humans subject to the full complexity of daily life, and wild-type mice subject to maximum environmental constraints. We find that active period durations with physical activity counts successively above a predefined threshold, when rescaled with individual means, follow a universal stretched exponential (gamma-type) cumulative distribution, while

SUBMITTER: Nakamura T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2323110 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature