The human brain has evolved specialized neural mechanisms for visual recognition of faces, which afford us a remarkable ability to discriminate between, remember and think about many hundreds of different individuals. Sheep also recognize and are attracted to individual sheep and humans by their faces, as they possess similar specialized neural systems in the temporal and frontal lobes for assisting in this important social task, including a greater involvement of the right brain hemisphere. Here we show that individual sheep can remember 50 other different sheep faces for over 2 years, and that the specialized neural circuits involved maintain selective encoding of individual sheep and human faces even after long periods of separation.

Faces are highly emotive stimuli and we find smiling or familiar faces both attractive and comforting, even as young babies. Do other species with sophisticated face recognition skills, such as sheep, also respond to the emotional significance of familiar faces? We report that when sheep experience social isolation, the sight of familiar sheep face pictures compared with those of goats or inverted triangles significantly reduces behavioural (activity and protest vocalizations), autonomic (heart rate) and endocrine (cortisol and adrenaline) indices of stress. They also increase mRNA expression of activity-dependent genes (c-fos and zif/268) in brain regions specialized for processing faces (temporal and medial frontal cortices and basolateral amygdala) and for emotional control (orbitofrontal and cingulate cortex), and reduce their expression in regions associated with stress responses (hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus) and fear (central and lateral amygdala). Effects on face recognition, emotional control and fear centres are restricted to the right brain hemisphere. Results provide evidence that face pictures may be useful for relieving stress caused by unavoidable social isolation in sheep, and possibly other animal species, including humans. The finding that sheep, like humans, appear to have a right brain hemisphere involvement in the control of negative emotional experiences also suggests that functional lateralization of brain emotion systems may be a general feature in mammals.

No abstract

Nature 414, 165-166 (2001) In Fig. 1b of this Brief Communication, the legend and text did not make it clear that two different groups of ten sheep were used in the study to give overall n 5 20. A reanalysis of the data using a post-hoc Tukey test (rather than a paired t-test, as originally stated) revealed some small errors that altered the significance values slightly; however, there is no overall change in the results. The maximum retest interval was 801 rather than 800 days, and 100-500 trials were conducted for 1-6 weeks (not 400-500 trials for 4-6 weeks, as published). A revised version of Fig. 1b showing the corrected statistical changes and an expanded legend incorporating further methodological detail are available as Supplementary Information to this Corrigendum.Supplementary Information is linked to the online version of this Corrigendum at www.nature.com/nature.

Introdução: Todos os comportamentos sofrem três tipos de seleção por consequências, por seleção natural ou filogenética; seleção das consequências pessoais e seleção dos efeitos de suas ações em seu grupo sociocultural. A identificação das variáveis das quais dado comportamento é função, para o behaviorismo, é chamada de Análise Funcional (AF). Descobrir o que, como e por quem, com quais custos e ganhos estão, no presente, controlando a existência do agir, revela sua chamada etiologia de manutenção e de origem, permitindo melhor plano terapêutico. Os objetivos desse artigo foram: a) definir a AF sob a ótica behaviorista; b) ensinar o modelo SORKC como uma das maneiras de fazê-lo; e c) apresentar a importância dessa estratégia e intervenção como um método de formular plano e estratégia para psicoterapia. A metodologia usada foi revisão de literatura tendo como fio condutor textos anteriormente publicados pela autora principal e os da coleção Sobre Comportamento e Cognição, da Associação Brasileira de Psicoterapia e Medicina Comportamental, (ABPMC). Considerações finais: Existem muitas formas de realizar AF e analisar esses múltiplos encadeamentos, mas em todas elas se busca as causas que controlam o comportar.