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The Next Frontier For Men's Contraceptive Choice: College Men's Willingness To Pursue Male Hormonal Contraception, Laurel M. Peterson, Meriel A. T. Campbell, Zoë E. Laky

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Unplanned pregnancy is a concern for emerging adult men, but their contraceptive options are limited. With male hormonal contraception clinical trials in progress, it is important to investigate men’s attitudes toward alternative contraception. Many social factors, such as masculine norms, may hinder their interest. This study used the prototype–willingness model to investigate college men’s willingness to pursue hormonal contraception. Male college students (N = 160; Mage = 19.37, SD = 1.33; 61.9% White) read a description of male contraception clinical trials and filled out a questionnaire assessing prototype–willingness and masculinity constructs. Multinomial logistic regression revealed that men perceiving greater …

Orexin Signaling During Social Defeat Stress Influences Subsequent Social Interaction Behaviour And Recognition Memory, Darrell Eacret, Laura A. Grafe, Anthony L. Gotter, John J. Renger, Christopher J. Winrow, Seema Bhatnagar

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Orexins are neuropeptides synthesized in the lateral hypothalamus that influence arousal, feeding, reward pathways, and the response to stress. However, the role of orexins in repeated stress is not fully characterized. Here, we examined how orexins and their receptors contribute to the coping response during repeated social defeat and subsequent anxiety-like and memory-related behaviors. Specifically, we used Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs) to stimulate orexins prior to each of five consecutive days of social defeat stress in adult male rats. Additionally, we determined the role of the orexin 2 receptor in these behaviors by using a selective …

The Diagnosis Of Asymptomatic Disease Is Associated With Fewer Healthy Days: A Cross Sectional Analysis From The National Health And Nutrition Examination Survey, Janel Hanmer, Lan Yu, Jie Li, Dio Kavalieratos, Laurel M. Peterson, Rachel Hess

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Objective

To examine the effect of the diagnosis of asymptomatic disease on health‐related quality of life (HRQoL).

Design

Secondary analysis of a national data set.

Method

We analysed adult participants in the 2011–2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) of the civilian non‐institutionalized US general population. Across three asymptomatic diseases (glucose intolerance, hyperlipidaemia, and hypertension), we examined four groups (without disease; with disease but no diagnosis; with disease and diagnosis but no treatment; and with disease, diagnosis, and treatment). For each asymptomatic disease, we examined group differences in self‐rated health (ordinal logistic regression) and Healthy Days outcomes (number of …

Developmental Trends In Sleep During Adolescents' Transition To Young Adulthood, Heejung Park

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Objective: Poor sleep poses negative health consequences for youth, yet few longitudinal actigraphy studies have examined basic developmental trends in sleep across adolescents’ transition to young adulthood. In this longitudinal actigraphy study, stability of individual differences and trajectories of sleep during and after high school were examined. The degree to which sleep trajectories differed by college attendance status was also studied.

Methods: A total of 343 youth with Asian, Latino, and European American backgrounds completed eight days of wrist actigraphy at two-year intervals in Wave 1(n= 295, M_age= 16.39), Wave 2 (n= …

Resting State Coupling Between The Amygdala And Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Is Related To Household Income In Childhood And Indexes Future Psychological Vulnerability To Stress, Jamie L. Hanson, Dustin Albert, Ann T. Skinner, Shutian H. Shen, Kenneth A. Dodge, Jennifer E. Lansford

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

While child poverty is a significant risk factor for poor mental health, the developmental pathways involved with these associations are poorly understood. To advance knowledge about these important linkages, the present study examined the developmental sequelae of childhood exposure to poverty in a multiyear longitudinal study. Here, we focused on exposure to poverty, neurobiological circuitry connected to emotion dysregulation, later exposure to stressful life events, and symptoms of psychopathology. We grounded our work in a biopsychosocial perspective, with a specific interest in “stress sensitization” and emotion dysregulation. Motivated by past work, we first tested whether exposure to poverty was related …

Passive Coping Strategies During Repeated Social Defeat Are Associated With Long-Lasting Changes In Sleep In Rats, Laura A. Grafe, Lauren O’Mara, Anna Branch, Jane Dobkin, Sandra Luz, Abigail Vigderman, Aakash Shingala, Leszek Kubin, Richard Ross, Seema Bhatnagar

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Exposure to severe stress has immediate and prolonged neuropsychiatric consequences and increases the risk of developing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Importantly, PTSD develops in only a subset of individuals after exposure to a traumatic event, with the understanding of this selective vulnerability being very limited. Individuals who go on to develop PTSD after a traumatic experience typically demonstrate sleep disturbances including persistent insomnia and recurrent trauma-related nightmares. We previously established a repeated social defeat paradigm in which rats segregate into either passively or actively coping subpopulations, and we found that this distinction correlates with measures of vulnerability or resilience to …

Sex- And Stress-Dependent Effects On Dendritic Morphology And Spine Densities In Putative Orexin Neurons, Laura A. Grafe, Eric Geng, Brian Corbett, Kimberly Urban, Seema Bhatnagar

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

We recently found that non-stressed female rats have higher basal prepro-orexin expression and activation of orexinergic neurons compared to non-stressed males, which lead to impaired habituation to repeated restraint stress at the behavioral, neural, and endocrine level. Here, we extended our study of sex differences in the orexin system by examining spine densities and dendritic morphology in putative orexin neurons in adult male and female rats that were exposed to 5 consecutive days of 30-min restraint. Analysis of spine distribution and density indicated that putative orexinergic neurons in control non-stressed females had significantly more dendritic spines than those in control …