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Exploratory behaviors are the acts and postures that allow an animal to gather information about a novel environment (Crusio and Van Abeelen 1986). These behaviors have been further classified into diversive and specific exploration dependent on the actuating Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical agent (Berlyne 1966). While diversive exploration is driven by a desire to be stimulated and relieve boredom, specific exploration is induced by novelty and may be driven by anxiety-like responses. Specific exploration was initially called the investigatory reflex by Pavlov when he Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical found that dogs would stop from active behaviors to attend novel stimuli (Pavlov and Anrep 1927). Even though exploratory behaviors are a complex and dynamic response to the novel stimuli, these behaviors are likely to include regular features that depend on properties of the environment.

Identifying these physical variables and understanding how they influence exploratory behavior can give significant insights into the mechanisms involved Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in behavioral GANT61 molecular weight responses to external stimuli. Drosophila melanogaster respond to a novel open-field arena with a high level of initial activity, followed by decay to lower levels of spontaneous activity (Connolly 1967; Meehan and Wilson 1987). In Drosophila, the elevated initial activity has been proposed to represent specific exploration (Liu et al. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 2007). Initial activity scales linearly with the circumference of the circular arena, is independent

of handling prior to placement within the arena, and is genetically separable; mutations Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the kurtz arrestin result specifically in lower levels of initial activity (Liu et al. Florfenicol 2007). Lastly, visually impaired flies are significantly impaired in the attenuation of initial activity, suggesting that visual information is required for the rapid decay from elevated initial activity to spontaneous activity within the novel open-field arena (Liu et al. 2007). Drosophila species also display strong wall-following behavior in open-field arenas; which has been alternatively interpreted as thigmotaxis (the attraction to the touch of the arena wall) and centrophobicity (center avoidance due to fear) (Gotz and Biesinger 1985; Besson and Martin 2005; Valente et al. 2007). Strong wall-following behavior may be a complex interaction that includes both thigmotactic and centrophobic responses, and in many species may represent a search for safety (Treit and Fundytus 1988; Choleris et al. 2001).