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Neuroscience and Neurobiology

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Theses and Dissertations

Amygdala

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Shaped By The Environment: The Influence Of Childhood Trauma Exposure, Individual Socioeconomic Position, And Neighborhood Disadvantage On Brain Morphology, Elisabeth Kathleen Webb Aug 2020

Shaped By The Environment: The Influence Of Childhood Trauma Exposure, Individual Socioeconomic Position, And Neighborhood Disadvantage On Brain Morphology, Elisabeth Kathleen Webb

Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between an individual’s socioeconomic position (SEP) and their overall physical and mental health has been well demonstrated. Far less is known about how area-level factors, such as neighborhood disadvantage, “get under the skin”. Previous research indicates lower SEP and childhood trauma negatively effects brain structure and function. The hippocampus, amygdala, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are particularly vulnerable to adversity. The current study investigated how individual SEP, childhood trauma, and neighborhood disadvantage impact these structures. Two-hundred and fifteen individuals were recruited from an Emergency Department in southeastern Wisconsin. Two-weeks post-traumatic injury, participants completed a structural magnetic resonance imaging …


Auditory And Contextual Contributions To Memory Lability And Synaptic Destabilization In The Amygdala, Nicole Christine Ferrara Aug 2018

Auditory And Contextual Contributions To Memory Lability And Synaptic Destabilization In The Amygdala, Nicole Christine Ferrara

Theses and Dissertations

Pavlovian fear conditioning provides a way to investigate memory formation and retrieval. During fear conditioning, a conditional stimulus (CS) is paired with an aversive outcome and the CS acquires aversive value over several pairings. The CS may then be presented during a retrieval session where fear responding is measured as an indicator of memory strength. Retrieval sessions may allow for the incorporation of new information into the original memory trace by destabilizing amygdala synapses. However, the specific circuits and neural inputs that contribute to memory lability and synaptic destabilization during a retrieval session are poorly understood. Previous work has shown …


Sex Differences In Differential Fear Conditioning During The Acquisition And Consolidation Of Learned Safety, David Sylvan Reis Aug 2017

Sex Differences In Differential Fear Conditioning During The Acquisition And Consolidation Of Learned Safety, David Sylvan Reis

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to distinguish between threatening and non-threatening situations requires careful regulation of behavioral and physiological responses to stress and fear. Deficits in fear regulation are maladaptive and can lead to the development of anxiety disorders such as PTSD. Women are nearly twice as likely to develop PTSD as are men and laboratory animal studies have shown facilitated fear acquisition, resistance to fear extinction, deficits in extinction retention and impaired discrimination between danger and safety cues in females. Taken together this suggests a propensity for reduced inhibitory control over fear responding in females. Here we investigate the mechanisms underlying fear …


Investigating The Functional Connectivity Of The Bed Nucleus Of The Stria Terminalis During Conditions Of Threat And Safety Using High Resolution 7 Tesla Fmri, Walker Scott Pedersen May 2017

Investigating The Functional Connectivity Of The Bed Nucleus Of The Stria Terminalis During Conditions Of Threat And Safety Using High Resolution 7 Tesla Fmri, Walker Scott Pedersen

Theses and Dissertations

An influential model of the extended amygdala defines fear as the immediate response to phasic threat and anxiety as the prolonged response to unpredictable or sustained threat (Davis, Walker, Miles & Grillon, 2010). This model proposes that in response to unpredictable threat, the centromedial amygdala (CeA) activates the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), which coordinates the anxiety response, and, in turn, inhibits the CeA. Connectivity between the BNST and both the basolateral amygdala (BLA) and hippocampus may also play an important role in the coordination of the anxiety response (Davis et al., 2010; Herman et al., 2003; Zhu, …


Neural Mechanisms Supporting Differential Auditory Fear Conditioning, Nicole Christine Ferrara Dec 2015

Neural Mechanisms Supporting Differential Auditory Fear Conditioning, Nicole Christine Ferrara

Theses and Dissertations

Pavlovian fear conditioning provides an ideal way to study memory formation, retention, and updating. Plasticity in the auditory thalamus is required during the acquisition and consolidation of a fear memory when a tone signals a foot shock. The medial geniculate nucleus (MgN) of the auditory thalamus sends projections to the amygdala and auditory cortex and is functionally divided into two different regions, the medial division (MGm) and the ventral division (MGv). Traditionally, these divisions are thought to relay auditory information to the amygdala during fear-related associative learning. However, recent research has suggested a more complex role for the MgN when …


Regulation Of Mtor And Erk Signaling In The Amygdala Through Proteolytic Modulation Of Pp2a Activity Following Auditory Fear Learning, David Sylvan Reis May 2015

Regulation Of Mtor And Erk Signaling In The Amygdala Through Proteolytic Modulation Of Pp2a Activity Following Auditory Fear Learning, David Sylvan Reis

Theses and Dissertations

The consolidation of fear memories is known to depend on a number of critical cellular processes including de novo protein synthesis and 26S proteasome-dependent protein degradation following auditory fear conditioning (Jarome et al., 2011; Kwapis et al., 2011). Early work has suggested that protein degradation, mediated by the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS), may regulate the requirement for de novo protein synthesis during memory consolidation (Jarome & Helmstetter, 2014). However, the precise way in which the UPS is able to regulate mechanisms of protein synthesis remain unclear. In the present set of experiments, we investigated the role of the protein phosphatase …


Changes In Resting-State Functional Connectivity Following Delay And Trace Fear Conditioning Acquisition And Extinction, Douglas Hank Schultz May 2014

Changes In Resting-State Functional Connectivity Following Delay And Trace Fear Conditioning Acquisition And Extinction, Douglas Hank Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

Consolidation is the process of stabilizing a recently acquired memory into a more permanent or durable form. Several studies with laboratory animals have uncovered valuable information about the process of consolidation, but less is known about the process of consolidation in healthy humans. The current study examined the consolidation of emotional memories in different brain circuits in healthy humans using resting-state fMRI. We used the acquisition and extinction of two variations of Pavlovian fear conditioning, delay and trace, which rely on slightly different circuits to examine changes in functional connectivity related to a general fear learning process and also to …


The Role Of A Camkii/Pka-Protein Degradation-Glur2 Pathway In The Control Of Memory Updating Following Retrieval, Timothy Jarome Aug 2013

The Role Of A Camkii/Pka-Protein Degradation-Glur2 Pathway In The Control Of Memory Updating Following Retrieval, Timothy Jarome

Theses and Dissertations

Reconsolidation is thought to be a process whereby consolidated memories can be modified following retrieval. However, very little is known about the molecular mechanisms that regulate this reconsolidation process. In the present series of experiments we tested if memories "destabilize" or become labile following retrieval through a specific signaling pathway. We found that retrieval of a contextual fear memory differentially increased proteasome activity in the amygdala and hippocampus and resulted in unique changes in AMPA receptor subunit expression in these brain regions. These changes were dependent on CaMKII activity, which was required for increases in Rpt6-S120 phosphorylation, proteasome activity and …