Rebecca Nordquist

• PhD
• Utrecht University

Stress is an important factor in animal welfare. Hair or wool cortisol concentrations are considered to be potential long-term indicators of stress experienced by an animal. Using Swifter sheep, we investigated whether ewe parity and litter size affect the wool cortisol concentrations in ewes and their offspring. We hypothesized that multiparous ew...

Understanding and measuring sheep cognition and behavior can provide us with measures to safeguard the welfare of these animals in production systems. Optimal neurological and cognitive development of lambs is important to equip individuals with the ability to better cope with environmental stressors. However, this development can be affected by nu...

This book provides practical information about interdisciplinary research, particularly to students and researchers of animal behaviour, animal welfare and veterinary sciences, to better understand how the integration of disciplines can advance animal welfare science. The book is divided into 2 parts. Part 1 gives guidance on how interdisciplinary...

In pigs, higher birth order is associated with higher pre-weaning mortality. However, knowledge on the effect of birth order on welfare of surviving piglets is limited. The aim of this study was to explore the possible link between birth order and both newborn piglet performance and later affective state. Firstly, the following data were collected...

Simple Summary Many protocols have been developed to assess farm animal welfare. However, the validity of these protocols is still subject to debate. The present study aimed to compare eight welfare assessment protocols. Chronic stress has a negative impact on animal welfare and causes an increase in cortisol, which can be objectively measured in h...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the PETI Committee, shows alternatives for cage housing of laying hens and sows in particular. Cage-free housing has a positive effect on the behavioural freedom of animals and welfare of animals. No major proble...

Protocol for cleaning wool before cortisol can be measured

Vincristine is a commonly used cytostatic drug for the treatment of leukemia, neuroblastoma and lung cancer, which is known to have neurotoxic properties. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of vincristine, injected directly into the dorsal hippocampus, in spatial memory using the spatial cone field discrimination task. Long Evans rats...

Chickens cannot independently thermoregulate at hatch and lack opportunity to behaviorally thermoregulate with a hen in the egg layer industry, thus barns are heated to thermoneutral temperatures. Dark brooders are low-energy-consuming hot plates, which may be environmentally advantageous while providing welfare-enhancing aspects of maternal care (...

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection during human pregnancy may lead to severe fetal pathology and debilitating impairments in offspring. However, the majority of infections are subclinical and not associated with evident birth defects. Potentially detrimental life-long health outcomes in asymptomatic offspring evoke high concerns. Thus, animal models addre...

Low birth weight (LBW) is a risk factor for cognitive and emotional impairments in humans. In pigs, LBW is a common occurrence, but its effects on cognition and emotion have received only limited scientific attention. To assess whether LBW pigs suffer from impaired cognitive and emotional development, we trained and tested 21 LBW and 21 normal birt...

Low birth weight (LBW) piglets are an increasingly common occurrence on commercial pig farms, due to selection for sow fecundity. In humans, LBW is a known risk factor for impaired brain development, resulting in impaired neurological functioning and increased vulnerability to stressors. In pigs, the pre-weaning effects of LBW on neurological and e...

Simple Summary Chickens raised to lay eggs are housed from hatch in groups of animals of the same age, and without maternal care from a broody hen. There are several hybrid lines of hens used in egg farming, each of which show their own behavioral profile. Both the presence (or absence) of a mother hen and genetics may affect cognition, social inte...

Simple Summary ‘Crowding’, keeping too many birds per m², is one of the largest welfare concerns in the poultry industry. It is therefore worrisome that there is a gap in research investigating the effects of high stocking densities during the rearing phase of laying hens. This study evaluated anxious behavior and corticosterone levels, a hormone i...

Breeding sows are regularly exposed to on-farm stressors throughout the duration of their production period. The impact of such stressors may differ for primi- and multiparous sows, as sows could learn to cope with stressors as they gain experience with them. If parity affects stress in sows, it may also impact their prenatal offspring through diff...

In commercial pig farming, an increasing number of low birth weight (LBW) piglets are born, due to selection for large litter sizes. While LBW piglets have a higher risk of pre-weaning mortality, a considerable number of these piglets survive to slaughter age. In humans, LBW is a risk factor for long-term cognitive impairments. In pigs, studies exa...

Rodents, and in particular murine models, are used in the majority of preclinical animal studies to gain insight into human behavioral dysfunctions, neurological and psychiatric disorders, and to develop therapeutics for the treatment of these disorders. However, many putative new therapeutics turn out to be insufficiently effective in clinical tri...

Pigs are increasingly used as animal models of early life events, both as models for humans and as models for pigs in farming. The relative similarities of young pigs to young humans in terms of brain development, physiology, diet, and gastrointestinal function make pigs a potentially powerful animal model for human neonates. In farm-kept animals,...

Biases in judgement of ambiguous stimuli, as measured in a judgement bias task, have been proposed as a measure of the valence of affective states in animals. We recently suggested a list of criteria for behavioural tests of emotion, one of them stating that responses on the task used to assess emotionality should not be confounded by, among others...

Abstract as included in conference proceedings.

The animal’s emotional state, eventually modulated by environmental conditions, may affect cognitive processes such as interpretation, judgement and decision making behaviour. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a common method to examine decision making behavior in humans in terms of risk avoidance and risk taking that reflects the underlying emotiona...

Simple summary Intensive farming systems are confronted with a number of animal welfare issues such as injuries from horns in cattle and feather pecking in poultry. To solve these problems, mutilating procedures, such as dehorning in cattle and goats and beak trimming in laying hens, are applied routinely. These and other procedures such as early m...

Studies of the cognitive abilities of pigs are increasing in number, due to their relevance for the fields of animal welfare and biomedical research. While both female and male pigs have been used in cognitive tasks, possible sex differences in performance have not yet received extensive attention. This is of interest, as sexual dimorphism in cogni...

Early iron deficiency is associated with impaired (cognitive) development, the severity of which depends on the timing and duration of the under-supply of iron. To design effective treatment and prevention strategies for iron deficiency in humans, suited animal models are needed. In an earlier study (Antonides et al., 2015) we separated 10 pairs of...

Comparison between reference memory scores of the control animals of our previous iron deficiency study (Antonides et al., 2015b), conducted in 2013, and of the control animals of the current study, conducted in 2015.

Overview of the composition of the experimental groups housed per pen after weaning at 4 weeks of age, and information of the piglets used in this study.

Number of samples per blood collection time point for the analysis of hemoglobin, hematocrit, and serum iron values.

Judgment bias tests are considered as a family of promising tools in the assessment of emotional states of animals. Judgment bias tasks (JBTs) provide a cognitive measure of optimism and/or pessimism by recording behavioral responses to ambiguous stimuli. For instance, a negative emotional state is expected to produce a negative or pessimistic judg...

Low birth weight (LBW) pigs face more welfare challenges than their normal birth weight (NBW) siblings. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of cognitive and learning abilities in these pigs may help to improve their welfare. Early competition in life over resources combined with the higher need for nutrient intake make it likely that LBW pigs h...

This study investigated the effects of environmental enrichment on the cognitive performance of female conventional farm (growing) pigs in a spatial holeboard task. Ten pairs of littermates matched for weight were used. From each litter, one piglet was randomly assigned to a barren environment; the other was assigned to an enriched environment from...

Average litter size has steadily increased over the past decades in the pig farming industry. Large litters are associated with an increase of piglets born with a lower birth weight and reduced overall piglet viability. The aim of our study was to investigate whether litter size affects emotionality, learning and memory in pigs. Ten piglets from la...

In adult chickens, the housing system influences hippocampal morphology and neurochemistry. However, no work has been done investigating the effects of the early life environment on chicken brain development. In the present study, we reared 67 commercial laying hens (Gallus gallus domesticus) in two environments that differed in the degree of compl...

Pigs in modern farming practice may be exposed to a number of stressors, including social stressors such as mixing or isolation. This may potentially affect both cognitive abilities and stress physiology of the animals. We tested the hypothesis that overnight social isolation in pigs impairs performance in a cognitive holeboard (HB) task (Experimen...

Iron deficiency (ID) is the most common nutritional deficiency in humans, affecting more than two billion people worldwide. Early-life ID can lead to irreversible deficits in learning and memory. The pig represents a promising model animal for studying such deficits, because of its similarities to humans during early development. We investigated lo...

Abstract included in conference proceedings.

Spatial cognition in vertebrates is adversely affected by a lack of environmental complexity during early life. However, to our knowledge, no previous studies have tested the effect of early exposure to varying degrees of environmental complexity on specific components of spatial cognition in chickens. There are two main rearing systems for laying...

Low birth weight (LBW) is common in humans and has been found to cause lasting cognitive and developmental deficits later in life. It is thought that the primary cause is intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) due to a shortage of oxygen and supply of nutrients to the fetus. Pigs appear to be a good model animal to investigate long-term cognitive...

Low birth weight (LBW) in humans is a risk factor for later cognitive, behavioural and emotional problems. In pigs, LBW is associated with higher mortality, but little is known about consequences for surviving piglets. Alteration in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function in LBW pigs suggests altered emotionality, but no behavioural indicators...

Animal models in neurobehavioral research To make sense of a discussion of animal models, one first has to understand both the purpose of such models, and their benefits to research, as well as the limitations on their interpretation. (McMillen, 1997: 409) In line with the above statement, a model is a good model when it serves its purpose (Geyer a...

The second volume of Behavioral Genetics of the Mouse provides a comprehensive overview of the major genetically modified mouse lines used to model human neurobehavioral disorders; from disorders of perception, of autonomous and motor functions to social and cognitive syndromes, drug abuse and dependence as well as neurodegenerative pathologies. Mo...

Background Feather pecking and cannibalism are major concerns in poultry farming, both in terms of animal welfare and farm economics. Genetic selection and introduction of (aspects of) maternal care have been suggested as potential interventions to reduce feather pecking in laying hens. Altered brain development has been proposed to reflect welfare...

Many mammalian species, as well as birds, are able to use a mirror either in the context of self-recognition, or instrumentally for discovering and manipulating objects that cannot be perceived directly. A noteworthy study by Broom et al. (2009) investigated the ability of pigs (Sus scrofa) to use a mirror to locate a hidden food source. The mirror...

Low-birth-weight (LBW) children are born with several risk factors for disease, morbidity and neonatal mortality, even if carried to term. Placental insufficiency leading to hypoxemia and reduced nutritional supply is the main cause for LBW. Brain damage and poor neurological outcome can be the consequence. LBW after being carried to term gives bet...

Pigs are commonly kept in intensive farming systems. Their use as model animals in biomedical research has increased. Both conditions may impact upon their welfare. Recent definitions of welfare emphasize the importance of emotion. Mood congruent biases in judgement have been proposed as proxy measures of emotion in animals; optimistic responses to...

Feather pecking (FP) in laying hens remains an important economic and welfare issue. This paper reviews the literature on causes of FP in laying hens. With the ban on conventional cages in the EU from 2012 and the expected future ban on beak trimming in many European countries, addressing this welfare issue has become more pressing than ever. The a...

We studied the ability of pigs to discriminate tone cues using successive and conditional discrimination tasks. Pigs (n = 8) were trained in a successive discrimination Go/No-Go task (Experiment 1) to associate a Go-cue with a reward at the end of a runway and a No-Go-cue with the absence of reward. Latency to reach the goal-box was recorded for ea...

Background The pig is emerging as a model species that bridges the gap between rodents and humans in research. In particular, the miniature pig (referred to hereafter as the minipig) is increasingly being used as non-rodent species in pharmacological and toxicological studies. However, there is as yet a lack of validated behavioral tests for pigs,...

Several animals living in social groups, such as monkeys, cows and sheep, have been shown to use facial discrimination for social recognition. Whether pigs can discriminate between faces of conspecifics purely based on visual stimuli provided by 2D portrait photographs, has not yet been investigated. Therefore, in this study piglets with a large bi...

Feather pecking and cannibalism in farm-kept laying hens are damaging behaviors both in terms of animal welfare and economic loss, and a major challenge in modern poultry farming. Both rearing with a foster hen and genetic selection have been demonstrated to reduce feather pecking in laying hens. We examined the effects of rearing with a foster hen...

In the commercial poultry industry, feather pecking leads to damage to the chickens and an increased mortality rate. The effects of two (possible) feather pecking prevention methods, infrared trimming and maternal care, on production parameters, fear, sociality, learning, feeding behavior, and feeding motivation were examined in young Silver Nick h...

Previous studies have demonstrated a profound lack of habituation in 129P3 mice compared to the habituating, but initially more anxious, BALB/c mice. The present study investigated whether this non-adaptive phenotype of 129P3 mice is primarily based on anxiety-related characteristics. To test this hypothesis and extend our knowledge on the behaviou...

Schematic representations of the open field and the object recognition test.Corrected P value thresholds of significance for the open field and object recognition test.Overview of all behavioural results in the open field after MPEP or diazepam treatment.Overview of CORT levels before and after open field or object recognition testing.Overview of c...

Learning impairments are often seen in children born with low birth weight (LBW). A model with translational value for long-term effects of LBW in humans is needed to further our understanding of how LBW and cognition are related. The similarities between development stages in human infants and piglets, and the high prevalence of LBW piglets make t...

Spatial learning and memory tasks have captured a solid position in neuroscience research. A variety of holeboard-type tasks are suitable for investigating the effects of a broad range of experimental manipulations on spatial learning and memory in a broad range of species, including fish, rodents, cats, pigs, tupaias, and humans. We summarize the...

a b s t r a c t Feather pecking and cannibalism in chickens can lead to injury or to death of the vic-tims, and is thus a serious welfare and economic issue in modern poultry farming. A sib selection scheme has been initiated to genetically select a low mortality line (LML), which shows decreased mortality due to cannibalism compared to a control l...

In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in (mini) pigs (Sus scrofa) as species for cognitive research. A major reason for this is their physiological and anatomical similarity with humans. For example, pigs possess a well-developed, large brain. Assessment of the learning and memory functions of pigs is not only relevant to human resear...

In experimental animal research, a short phylogenetic distance, i.e., high resemblance between the model species and the species to be modeled is expected to increase the relevance and generalizability of results obtained in the model species. The (mini)pig shows multiple advantageous characteristics that have led to an increase in the use of this...

Recently, a debate has emerged on the use and necessity of standardization in experimental testing using animal subjects. The difficulties encountered when trying to reconcile standardization and generalization largely underlie this debate. The more specific the testing procedures are, the less one can generalize to more naturalistic situations, in...

The tachykinin NK3 receptor shows promise as a novel target for antipsychotics, but knowledge of downstream activity following tachykinin NK3 receptor activation is lacking. To determine the practical utility of senktide-induced tail whips in mice as a tool for determining and characterizing downstream activity following tachykinin NK3 receptor act...

Improper social behavior development brings problems in later social life. Several time points are known to be crucial for the development and in other words, susceptible to interruptions during those time points. In conventional pigs, those time points could be categorized to three interaction periods, the period for piglet-sow interaction (suckli...

Rodents are usually used to assess the ability of antipsychotic drugs to antagonize hyperlocomotion induced by dopamine agonists, such as the psychostimulant d-amphetamine. However, the substantial differences between rodents and humans may hinder extrapolation of experimental results to humans. For this reason, we speculated that Göttingen miniatu...

Animal models play a central role in all areas of biomedical research. The process of animal model building, development and evaluation has rarely been addressed systematically, despite the long history of using animal models in the investigation of neuropsychiatric disorders and behavioral dysfunctions. An iterative, multi-stage trajectory for dev...

The tachykinin family of receptors has been of strong interest recently due to the potential of the tachykinin NK(3) receptor antagonism in treatment of schizophrenia. However, critical differences in the tachykinin NK(3) receptor between rats, mice and humans make rats and mice less acceptable species for testing tachykinin NK(3) receptor antagoni...

The neurokinin 3 (NK3) receptor is a novel target under investigation for improvement of symptoms of schizophrenia, because of its ability to modulate dopaminergic signaling. To further understanding of the function of this receptor, sensitivity to dopaminergic stimuli and levels of dopaminergic receptors and tyrosine hydroxylase in NK3 receptor kn...

The increasing awareness of the need to align clinical and preclinical research to facilitate rapid development of new drug therapies is reflected in the recent introduction of the term "translational medicine". This review examines the implications of translational medicine for psychiatric disorders, focusing on metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) recep...

The neurokinin 3 (NK(3)) receptor is a novel target under investigation for improvement of the symptoms of schizophrenia due to its ability to modulate dopaminergic signaling. However, research on effects of NK(3) antagonism with animal models has been hindered because of species differences in the receptor between humans, rats, and mice. The aim o...

Repeated exposure to psychostimulant drugs causes a long-lasting increase in the psychomotor and reinforcing effects of these drugs and an array of neuroadaptations. One such alteration is a hypersensitivity of striatal activity such that a low dose of amphetamine in sensitized animals produces dorsal striatal activation patterns similar to acute t...

Aripiprazole (OPC-14597) is an antipsychotic with a unique pharmacology as a dopamine D2 receptor partial agonist, which has been demonstrated to reduce symptoms of schizophrenia. To further profile this compound in preclinical models, we examined aripiprazole-induced activity changes as measured by pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)...

Background: Glutamate mediates its effects via ionotropic and metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors. mGlu receptors are G protein-coupled receptors that are classified into three clusters, group I-III. This review focuses on the mGlu5 receptors of group I. mGlu5 receptors are highly expressed in limbic brain regions and are located postsynaptical...

The mGlu5 receptor antagonist 2-methyl-6-(phenylethylnyl)-pyridine (MPEP) is highly anxiolytic in rodent models of anxiety. Recent studies showed that MPEP remains effective in some models of anxiety after repeated treatment, but tolerance may develop in other models. To further evaluate anxiolytic properties of repeated MPEP, a single administrati...

Various processes might explain the progression from casual to compulsive drug use underlying the development of drug addiction. Two of these, accelerated stimulus-response (S-R) habit learning and augmented assignment of motivational value to reinforcers, could be mediated via neuroadaptations associated with long-lasting sensitization to psychost...

Repeated exposure to drugs of abuse causes behavioral sensitization, a progressive and persistent increase in the psychomotor response to drugs. Behavioral sensitization is accompanied by altered responses to motivational stimuli and a wide array of neuroadaptations in limbic corticostriatal systems. Interestingly, both the behavioral and neural ch...

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is known to be involved in associative learning; however, its specific role in acquisition of cued classical conditioning has not yet been determined. Furthermore, the role of regional differences within the PFC in the acquisition of cued conditioning is not well described. These issues were addressed by exposing rats to...

A crucial aspect of organizing goal-directed behavior is the ability to form neural representations of relationships between environmental stimuli, actions and reinforcement. Very little is known yet about the neural encoding of response-reward relationships, a process which is deemed essential for purposeful behavior. To investigate this, tetrode...

In mammals, the synaptosomal-associated protein of 25 kDa, SNAP-25, is generally thought to play a role in synaptic exocytosis of neuronal messengers. Using a polyclonal antiserum against rat SNAP-25, we have shown the presence of a SNAP-25-like protein in the brain of the South-African clawed toad Xenopus laevis by Western blotting and immunocytoc...