Biology and Life Sciences

Abstract: For 10 months, our team tested the communication and cooperation skills, as well as theory of mind, of three adult male western lowland gorillas at the Opole Zoo in Poland. The cognitive tasks presented to the gorillas enriched their daily routine and interactions with their keepers. The aim of this article is to analyze whether the cognitive tasks presented to the gorillas correlated with behavioral changes toward more frequent communication and cooperation with their caretaker, as well as toward positive emotional responses, compared to their state before performing the tasks. We used behavioral observation protocols, focused on observing and interpreting changes in the gorillas’ behavior while they performed the cognitive tasks. The results of the study indicate that two out of three individuals showed an increase in communicative and cooperative interactions with their caretaker, as well as greater affective stability, which may be an indicator of a stronger bond rooted in positive emotional experiences. As a result, appropriately selected cognitive tasks can provide sensory and social enrichment, which corresponds to the fourth and fifth domains of David Mellor’s welfare model, relating to communicative and affiliative behaviors, as well as the quality of animals’ affective and mental experiences in zoos.

Abstract: This is a stand-alone theoretical article. It is not a protocol, a research proposal, or supplementary material to another manuscript. Conventional psychotherapeutic treatments often face limitations in cases of chronic suffering that persists despite the client's verbal understanding and reflective insight. In this article, I present Implicit Reintegration Therapy (TRI) as a brief, focal approach grounded in affective neuroscience, predictive processing, and nondeclarative memory. The central thesis holds that psychological suffering that does not stem from direct material deprivation is organized as affective shear between adaptive processes oriented toward individual survival and the preservation of social bonds. By conceiving of the body as the primary stage of this tension and of representational systems as matrices of automated response patterns, the model intervenes directly on somatosensory responses active in the present, dispensing with the retrospective reconstruction of childhood. The intervention uses mediated interoceptive confrontation and relational triangulation to promote desensitization of the aversive response and enable reeducation in everyday life. The model is formalized in three clinical hypotheses with explicit criteria for empirical refutation, which establishes the basis for controlled, independent investigation. The article closes with a prospective research agenda, which describes designs that other groups could adopt and does not constitute a study protocol.

Abstract: The objective of this study was to examine the effect of lack of visual input on the ontogeny of fear response. We used a genetically blind chicken model (rc chickens) and used Tonic Immobility (TI) for testing the fear response. There were four blind groups and four sighted groups of rc chickens in this study, and each group had 45 chickens. We perform the TI test at the age of Day 2 and at Days14, 28, and 70, respectively to study the ontogeny of fear response. Blind chickens were more difficult to induce a TI response and stayed in TI for a significantly shorter time compared to sighted controls. The results from the TI tests indicated that the blind males had a slower rate in developing a TI response (from Day 2 to Day 70) than blind females. The blindness of the rc chicken was caused by a deletion in the GC1 locus resulting in the disruption of cGMP metabolism. Besides causing the degeneration of rods and cones in the retina, cGMP deficiency may have direct effect on the brain cells to supress tonic immobility. cGMP also seems to affect male sexual maturity differently than female sexual maturity. Our results indicated that the ontogeny of fear response was dependent on the interaction of age, sex, experience and visual input, and the ontogeny of TI response in rc chickens may not be just reflecting the ontogeny of fear response but also physiological processes affected by the mutation.

Abstract: In natural, continuous sport settings, it remains unclear how athletes use an existing motor schema to parameterize an already learned skill for a new target and how subsequent actions are organized once outcome information becomes available. This study examined initial parameterization after landing-location change and prior-outcome associations with the immediately subsequent serve during continuous table-tennis serving. Twelve male athletes completed the serving task together with task-switching, stop-change, and N-back tasks. Three-dimensional movements were recorded using VICON motion capture, and trial-level generalized estimating equations modeled binary hit outcome and seven kinematic deviations from individualized stable-serving templates. In Stage 1, hit probability was lower under Target change than Target maintenance. Temporal-phasing deviation showed a stronger negative association with hit probability under Target change, suggesting that relative timing was particularly relevant to initial parameterization. Longer training duration was associated with smaller temporal-phasing deviation, while the association between change-trial accuracy and hit probability varied by target context. In Stage 2, a successful t₀ outcome was associated with a higher probability of a t₁ hit. Although t₀ outcome was not consistently associated with t₁ kinematic deviations themselves, the associations of t₁ temporal-phasing and elbow-velocity deviations with hit probability differed according to the preceding outcome. Training duration and change-trial accuracy were also associated with smaller t₁ temporal-phasing and elbow-velocity deviations, respectively. Overall, the findings support initial schema-based parameterization after landing-location change and provide partial observational evidence for prior-outcome associations with next-trial organization.

Abstract: Urbanization drastically alters bird communities, creating an urgent need for practical in-dicators to monitor species colonization and decline. We investigated whether avian boldness, measured by Alert Distance (AD), Flight Initiation Distance (FID), and escape tactics such as escape mode and site, is better related to urban colonization history and ecological opportunities than morphological variables such as body mass. In the high-altitude Neotropical city of La Paz, Bolivia, we assessed five pigeon species in 15 ur-ban green spaces, quantifying abundance and escape behaviors and relating them to sev-eral environmental metrics. The invasive Rock Pigeon exhibited the greatest abundance and boldness, escaping primarily by walking to the ground and preferring impermeable areas. The Eared Dove showed intermediate abundance and boldness but a wider habitat uses than the Rock Pigeon. The recently urbanized Spot-winged Pigeon showed the lowest abundance and boldness, predominantly escaping by flying to elevated perches, demon-strating a strong dependence on tree cover. The Bare-faced Ground Dove was only present in one green area, indicating a process of disappearance in the city, and the Picui Ground Dove was totally absent from our counts, probably due to physiological limitations. Gen-eralized linear models confirmed that body mass did not explain AD or FID, rather, bold-ness was more related to the timing and ecological opportunities for urban colonization in relation to environmental factors. Combining behavioral metrics (AD, FID and escape mode) with population censuses offers a low-cost, highly sensitive tool for monitoring urban wildlife dynamics and guiding biodiversity-friendly urban planning.

Abstract: Valproic acid (VPA) is a widely used anticonvulsant and mood stabilizer and a known teratogen associated with neural tube defects and neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Prenatal VPA exposure is widely used to model ASD-like behaviors in rodents; however, most studies employ a single dose, and direct comparisons between commonly used regimens are lacking. We therefore compared two widely used VPA doses (300 and 600 mg/kg) administered to pregnant mice on embryonic day 12.5 (E12.5). Male and female offspring were evaluated longitudinally for early neurological development, ultrasonic vocalizations, locomotor activity, anxiety-like behavior, sociability, and working memory. Prenatal VPA exposure produced non-linear, dose- and sex-dependent effects. Early neurodevelopment was largely preserved, with only mild and transient delays that were most evident after 300 mg/kg. In contrast, later behavioral alterations differed according to dose, sex, age, and behavioral measure. Sociability deficits were stable across doses in males but became more pronounced with age in females, whereas working memory impairment predominated after 600 mg/kg during adolescence and after 300 mg/kg in adulthood. These findings demonstrate that increasing prenatal VPA dose does not simply increase behavioral severity but produces distinct neurodevelopmental trajectories that depend on dose, sex, and developmental stage.

Abstract: Cardiac autonomic recovery after exercise is conventionally summarized as a single nocturnal heart rate variability (HRV) average, treating sleep as a passive backdrop rather than an active determinant of recovery. A fragmented but convergent literature indicates instead that autonomic state tracks sleep stage in real time, with parasympathetic dominance concentrated in slow-wave sleep (SWS) and attenuated during REM sleep, and that this coupling is causally, not merely correlationally, linked to post-exercise recovery: enhancing slow-wave activity increases parasympathetic HRV, sleep restriction disrupts nocturnal autonomic state directly, and post-exercise vagal reactivation is depressed on nights following intense exercise, localized to the SWS stage. This review synthesizes the literature into a systems physiology framework in which SWS functions as a determinant of post-exercise cardiac autonomic recovery, integrating brainstem circuitry and neurotransmitter systems, causal manipulations of SWS (acoustic, pharmacological, deprivation-based), exercise dose-response, and boundary conditions (age, sex, training status, sleep, and cardiovascular disorders) under which the coupling is preserved, attenuated, or absent. The resulting effect is graded and window-specific rather than uniform: robust in the early postexercise reactivation phase and during nocturnal SWS, but not established across the full multi-hour recovery curve. The framework is translated into falsifiable predictions and candidate study designs, including critical appraisal of wearable and nearable sleep-tracking validity. Two evidentiary gaps are addressed transparently: the human circuit-level mechanism remains largely inferred from rodent studies, and independent citation-network verification is not feasible for all sources. These findings reposition slow-wave sleep as an integral, mechanistically tractable component of systemic autonomic and cardiovascular physiology rather than as a variable external to it.

Abstract: Behavioral control requires translation between different representations. Drives translate physiological state into motivational intensity. Values translate competing drives and context into an ordered ranking. Goals translate current values into temporally extended plans. Each translation is a protocol that transforms the representation of one domain into the representation of another domain. I argue that drives, values, and goals form a protocol stack of the kind found in many robust layered systems in engineering and biology. Each protocol occurs at a translation interface between domains. At the interface, heterogeneous upstream inputs compress into compact signals that downstream systems use to guide action. Interfaces tend to be evolutionarily conserved because change breaks communication between the two sides. Fragility concentrates at the interface. The framework predicts a gradient of model-dependence in the architecture of translation interfaces. Drives translate physiology into motivation through concentrated, identifiable interface circuits. Values combine concentrated components for direct translations and distributed components for model-based predictions. Goals primarily output model-based plans about extended futures, implemented in distributed circuits. Many observations match the framework’s combination of translation, compression, conservation, and fragility.

Abstract: Behavioral execution is not simply a graded response to one variable. It occurs when several independent requirements are satisfied simultaneously, and their combined readiness crosses the threshold. The ARCH × Φ framework formalizes this relation asR = A × D × C × Φ,where Archetype (A) is the assembled structural substrate, Drive (D) the internal motivational or endocrine bias, Context (C) the effective releasing and modulating conditions, and Φ a permissive physiological state. Execution occurs when R reaches a system-specific threshold, θ.The framework is tested in a tractable case: arbitration between courtship and defense in male Drosophila melanogaster. As courtship progresses, a male with intact escape circuitry becomes increasingly resistant to interruption by a looming visual threat. In a single-behavior model, this presents no special difficulty. In a two-channel model, however, a shared Φ between courtship and defense cancels out in their relative allocation, while both remain within a linear operating range. The established mechanism—a dopaminergic filter that attenuates threat-responsive visual input—is therefore best classified as an option-specific change in defensive Context. As currently characterized, the courtship–defense switch requires no permissive field.A narrower role for Φ remains possible. Ecdysteroid signaling and the dual dopamine–ecdysteroid receptor DopEcR influence both courtship-related plasticity and escape habituation, suggesting that they regulate the operating range of multiple behavioral channels. This possibility is treated as a testable hypothesis rather than an established mechanism. The analysis therefore yields both a three-term explanation of the known arbitration and a set of experiments to determine whether a shared fourth term is present at all.

Abstract: Reliable heart rate variability (HRV) assessment in freely moving therapy dogs is challenging because movement degrades electrocardiographic (ECG) signal quality. This study evaluated ambulatory ECG monitoring during routine canine-assisted psychotherapy (CAP) and examined the influence of signal quality on HRV estimation. Ambulatory ECG recordings were obtained from two certified therapy dogs during 38 CAP sessions. HRV was calculated from 60-s sliding windows using both permissive and conservative preprocessing strategies. Behavioral activity was retrospectively coded from synchronized videos, and normalized signal quality index (SQI) was assessed. Cluster-robust regression models were used to evaluate data feasibility, SQI, and the root mean square of successive beat-to-beat differences (RMSSD) as marker of vagal HRV. The permissive strategy retained 10,075 analysis windows, whereas the strict strategy retained 4,529 windows. Under the permissive preprocessing strategy, inactivity was associated with slightly higher SQI, whereas no significant differences in SQI between activity states were observed under the conservative strategy. In both strategies, RMSSD was significantly higher during inactivity and increased with improving SQI. A significant interaction demonstrated that the association between SQI and RMSSD was stronger during active than inactive periods. These findings suggest that ambulatory ECG enables robust HRV assessment in therapy dogs under real-world conditions when ECG signal quality is explicitly considered. More important than a strict quality threshold, incorporating SQI into statistical analyses improves interpretation of autonomic measurements obtained during naturalistic CAP.

Abstract: The origin of creation and the emergence of subjective experience remain among the deepest unsolved questions in science. We propose a unified hypothesis in which 'creation' is any entity or process with a beginning and an end in space and time. This premise implies the existence of a universal ground state as the source which is all-pervading, eternal, uniform and memoryless. All observable phenomena arise as cyclical fluctuations within this ground state, which simultaneously serves as a stable universal reference (ground zero) enabling the detection of change. We redefine consciousness as a measurement problem enabled by this universal ground zero reference, with subjective experience originating from the resonance and energy redistribution between perceived signals and stored memory cycles. This re-frames the hard problem of consciousness by grounding perception in a universal substrate present at every point in the universe. The apparent differences in awareness between different points in space is arising from their state of evolution with variation in memory capacity and responsiveness.

Abstract: Animals hold many executable behavioral programs at once yet express one at a time. This review builds an account of that arbitration in three stages. First, we revisit six classical findings—stickleback territorial contests, white-crowned sparrow song learning, behavioral choice in Drosophila, rodent lordosis genetics, clownfish sex change and cichlid social ascent—and show that each poses a problem its original framing cannot resolve. Reanalysis of the published data from four of these systems supplies quantitative tests: winner-loser effects fit a metaplastic drift of the baseline threshold rather than a change in drive; the song-learning window behaves as a graded threshold rather than a categorical veto, with fifty percent adoption near sixty-five days; behavioral alternation in Drosophila follows from each program consuming the very terms that opened it, with no fatigue or noise term required; and lordosis knockouts separate into categorical and graded failure modes by whether the deleted element is an obligatory transducer. Second, we assemble these results into an explicit model of Dynamic Archetypal Coordination: conjunctive gating with a structural veto, a winner-take-all arbitration layer, margin consumption, and a slow metaplastic baseline. This model requires no gating field and stands on data generated by other laboratories. Third, we identify what it cannot explain—that a single physiological manipulation can scale several unrelated behaviors together—and propose a shared sterol-derived permissive field as the resolution, deriving a dissociation signature that distinguishes it from gain-control and additive accounts. This is a theoretical synthesis: no new experiments are reported and all data are previously published.

Abstract: Background: The increase in prevalence of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in children in most countries of the world has been attributed to assortative mating meaning that spouses have found each other guided by features of ASD leading to increased genetic predisposition in the offspring. This does not explain the differences in prevalence of ASD in subgroups of the population with similar mating patterns. This study tested the hypothesis that parental genetic heterogeneity is associated with ASD in the offspring. Methods: Included in this study were data from population based studies reporting number of patients with ASD in populations with known high, moderate or low genetic heterogeneity. The prevalence (per 10000 of population) was compared between groups. Compared were the percentages of children with learning difficulties in the three groups. Results: The prevalence of ASD across spouse pairs of high, moderate or low genetic heterogeneity for 182016 children with ASD in childhood populations totalling 62 290 632 children in the USA, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Israel and Australia were compared. In all studies reporting data prevalence of ASD was significantly higher in offspring of parents with high genetic heterogeneity ranging from 12.9 to 280.5 compared to offspring of parents with moderate genetic heterogeneity with a range of 9.0 to 243.1 and low genetic heterogeneity with a range of 4.6 to 71.7. The percentage of children with learning difficulties showed no consistent difference between groups. Conclusion: Autism spectrum disorder in offspring is associated with parental genetic heterogeneity.

Abstract: Background/Objectives: Walking-induced fatigue disrupts postural balance, but the differentiated effects of walking uphill and downhill remain unclear. The aim was to compare the impact of two walking sequences, either uphill (+10%) or downhill (-20%), with an identical number of steps (7000 steps) on a treadmill at 5.5 km.h-1 on postural balance. Methods: Nineteen healthy young participants performed the two walking sequences sessions (56 and 57 min) eight days apart. Maximal voluntary contraction, central activation ratio, and eyes closed bipedal postural balance (in 3 randomized conditions: an unmanipulated condition, a tendon vibration manipulation condition - TV - and a galvanic vestibular stimulation manipulation condition - GVS), were assessed before (PRE), immediately after (POST), and 20 minutes after (POST20) each walking sequence. Results: Walking uphill and walking downhill sequences generated similar muscular and central fatigue in the POST and POST 20 conditions. In the unmanipulated postural condition, postural balance was disrupted after both walking sequences in the POST condition, with no difference between walking downhill and walking uphill. In the manipulated postural conditions, postural balance was modified by the walking sequences. It was disrupted in the presence of GVS in the POST condition with no difference between walking downhill and uphill, whereas it was not disrupted in the presence of TV and was even improved after walking uphill. Conclusions: Although the postural alteration was broadly similar between the two walking sequences, the disruptive factors would differ between them at the muscular, metabolic and sensory levels.

Abstract: The regular practice of physical exercise is often associated with promoting benefits for practitioners. In recent decades, street running has become popular worldwide, with most participants being amateur runners who engage in the activity as a means of promoting quality of life. Among the psychological aspects related to exercise, studies have shown that some individuals may become susceptible to “exercise dependence,” a condition in which exercise takes a central role in a person’s life. As a result, individuals may exhibit characteristics such as: excessive training; injuries; weight control issues; withdrawal symptoms when unable to exercise; and even problems in social relationships, when exercise is exclusively prioritized. Background/Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze levels of susceptibility to running dependence and its relationship with exercise volume and mood states (tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, and mental confusion). Methods: This was a quantitative cross-sectional study involving 761 regular Brazilian runners (59.8% male and 40.2% female) who consented to participate and answered the Sociodemographic Questionnaire, the Escala de Dependência de Corrida (EDC), a Brazilian Portuguese adaptation of the Negative Addiction Scale (NAS), and the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS). The analysis plan was conducted through descriptive statistics (mean; standard deviation; median; 1st and 3rd quartiles; interquartile range and 95% confidence intervals) and inferential statistics (Spearman’s Correlation and Kruskal-Wallis Test). In all tests, the significance level adopted was p<0.05. Results: The sample was divided into three groups of susceptibility to exercise dependence: low (37.6%), moderate (36.4%), and high (26%). Scores indicative of exercise dependence showed positive correlations with practice volume variables (years of experience and weekly days, time, and mileage) and the mood factors of vigor and tension. Comparisons made using the Kruskal-Wallis Test revealed significant differences between the groups, as higher levels of susceptibility to dependence were positively associated with higher running volumes and vigor scores. Conclusions: Indicators of exercise dependence were positively related to positive mood, indicating mental health among the assessed sample.

Abstract: Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is often described through functional labels such as emotion regulation, self-punishment, interpersonal influence, or escape from aversive internal states. These labels are clinically useful, but they do not fully explain how self-injury becomes selected under stress. This paper proposes the Inward-Routed Mobilization Model (IRM) of NSSI, a mechanism-level account of selection under high activation, reduced deployable capacity, and constrained outward representation. IRM suggests that NSSI becomes more likely when mobilization rises, negative affect cannot be safely represented toward an over-idealized figure, outward expression is appraised as relationally or psychologically dangerous, and the body becomes the most immediate site for state change. The pathway does not require consciously labeled anger; it requires that protest, hurt, disappointment, shame, humiliation, or boundary-relevant mobilization cannot be safely directed toward the protected figure. The model is organized around a common origin pathway: over-idealized figure constraint, truncated negative affective mobilization, inward routing, and bodily state transition. IRM adds a selection-level account to existing functional, reinforcement, self-punishment, and emotion-regulation models and yields testable predictions for ecological momentary assessment, developmental research, clinical formulation, and treatment studies focused on constraint repair, capacity restoration, and safe outward throughput.

Abstract: In recent years, cannabidiol (CBD) has been used as an adjunct therapy to anti-seizure medications for the control of seizures in patients with drug-resistant epilepsies. In addition to its anticonvulsant effect, CBD also well-defined anti-inflammatory properties. Since neuroinflammation can trigger various pro-epileptogenic mechanisms For this reason, CBD could play an inhibitory role in this process. Epileptogenesis is the process by which epilepsy becomes a chronic disease following a brain injury and one of its main characteristics is an increased susceptibility to seizures due to reduced seizure threshold. However, the role of CBD in modulating this susceptibility remains poorly understood. We developed an experimental protocol to discretely measure seizure threshold (DMST) 7 or 14 days after lithium-pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus (SE) through the administration of small intraperitoneal (i.p.) doses of pentylenetetrazol (15 mg/kg/ every 10 minutes). Using the DMST, we observed a significant decrease in seizure threshold after SE associated with a hypersensitivity state characterized by irritability and marked weight loss. A separate cohort of rats was treated with CBD (20mg/kg) for 14 days following SE. Treatment with CBD did not improve seizure threshold, moreover, it worsened the hypersensitivity state, and delayed the recovery following SE. Our results suggest that orally administered CBD, at a human therapeutically recommended and safe dose, does not improve susceptibility to seizure development after SE.

Abstract: This study investigated breed-related genetic predisposition on hunting behaviour by comparing Magyar Vizslas and Border Collies using behavioural tests and an online questionnaire. Differences in specific sequences of the hunting behaviour chain were examined with respect to frequency, duration, and latency. Three standardized test situations were conducted with 15 dogs (8 Magyar Vizslas, 7 Border Collies), including reactions to a thrown toy, a play rod, and a running human. Behavioural data were analysed using the Mann–Whitney-U-test for frequencies and randomization tests for duration and latency. Significant breed differences were found for the duration of chasing behaviour: Border Collies exhibited longer chasing durations than Magyar Vizslas in response to a play rod (p = 0.004) and a running human (p = 0.025). To increase sample size, an online questionnaire was issued, completed by 359 dog handlers and then analysed using the Kruskal-Wallis-test. Particularly striking were the findings regarding the behaviour of pointing: Magyar Vizslas showed significantly higher frequencies of pointing behaviour both in response to thrown toys and during wildlife encounters (p < 0,001). Overall, results from both behavioural tests and questionnaire data indicate breed-typical predispositions affecting specific components of hunting behaviour in these two breeds.

Abstract: Anthropogenic prehistory may be divided into two subsequent phases, the first one from the Last Common Ancestor (LCA) between humans and great apes till the emergence of the genus Homo, and the second phase onwards from then. Until hominins appeared, LCA had lived predominantly on trees, while Homo finally lived only on the ground. After LCA and before Homo, the intermediate bimodal transition period from 7 to 2 Myr BP was coined by the emergence of systematic bipedal gait, breaking the previously uniform quadrupedal locomotion symmetry. By contrast to versions of the common savannah hypothesis, this paper suggests an alternative fictitious scenario of periodic migration between alternatingly inhabitable arboreal refuges. Possibly caused by regional climate change, yet tree-climbing hominins were additionally forced to genetically develop speedy and efficient bipedal locomotion for survival during their temporary but extended regular excursions across open territory. Increasingly upright locomotion resulted in offspring’s early weaning, and in turn in the emergence of childhood with enhanced lethal risks for toddlers. Related selective pressure caused transformations of reproductive traits from gradual sexual selection in apes to undulating sexual conflicts in hominins. Between LCA and Homo, consistent with fossil evidence, the evolutionary bimodal transition phase, with forelimbs for climbing and hind limbs for running, did not necessarily require enlarged brains for advanced mental capabilities, nor specific communication or new forms of social cooperation such as those successively found in Homo. Assumingly, broken spatial and temporal environmental symmetry had induced related symmetry breaking of hominin behaviour, their anatomic structures and reproduction habits.

Abstract: A targeted cross-species retro-analysis was conducted using three independent published datasets to test whether the DNA demethylase recruiter gadd45b occupies a functionally distinct category from canonical immediate early genes (IEGs). Whereas canonical IEGs generally respond to sufficiently intense neural or behavioral stimulation, gadd45b appears to be preferentially induced by genuine social engagement and social outcome resolution. In Betta splendens, gadd45bb (BSP_05575) was not differentially expressed after 20 minutes of fighting (logFC=+0.34, FDR=0.87) but increased after 60 minutes of sustained mutual assessment (logFC=+1.74, FDR=8.9×10⁻⁵) and reached its highest expression at or immediately following social outcome determination (logFC=+2.02, FDR=1.4×10⁻⁵). In zebra finch, singing-prevented adults—chronologically mature birds prevented from executing vocal learning—retained juvenile-like dendritic spine density in RA-projection neurons (p=0.774 versus juveniles; p=1.14×10⁻⁶ versus adults), while gadd45b expression distinguished singing adults from singing-prevented adults in HVC (p=0.014). Together with a zebrafish mirror-versus-real-opponent dissociation, these findings are consistent with gadd45b functioning not as a generic activity sensor but as a molecular mechanism engaged when socially assessed behavioral interactions are completed and their outcomes resolved. This property may bear on longstanding questions in neuroendocrinology, where the biological consequences of social conflict depend more strongly on social meaning than on physical intensity alone. The molecular machinery that translates social outcome into durable cellular change remains poorly characterized. Outcome-gated gadd45b-mediated DNA demethylation may represent a genomic form of metaplastic regulation that not only records experience but also modifies the chromatin landscape governing future responses to experience. This framework generates experimentally testable predictions regarding the molecular encoding of social outcome.