Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
-
- Sleep (7)
- Aromatase (5)
- Attention (5)
- ERP (5)
- Memory (5)
-
- Aging (4)
- Audition (4)
- Brain (4)
- Estradiol (4)
- Adolescence (3)
- Anxiety (3)
- Cognition (3)
- EEG (3)
- Estrogen (3)
- Event-related potentials (3)
- Puberty (3)
- Sex differences (3)
- Social Behavior (3)
- Songbird (3)
- Stress (3)
- ADHD (2)
- Alcohol (2)
- Behavior (2)
- Common marmoset (2)
- Cortisol (2)
- Dopamine (2)
- Emotion (2)
- Invertebrate (2)
- Locomotion (2)
- Maternal behavior (2)
- Publication Year
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 30 of 84
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala
Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala
Doctoral Dissertations
Preschool-age children often distribute their sleep across a midday nap and overnight sleep. Skipping the nap is suggested to increase the duration and depth of deep sleep (i.e., slow wave activity; SWA). Moreover, missing the midday nap has been shown to impair learning processes. This may be because children’s brains at this point in development are immature, necessitating the intervening nap period to strengthen memories before they are forgotten. Nonetheless, at some point during the preschool years, many children begin transitioning naturally out of napping. It is unclear whether the memory benefits of overnight SWA after a skipped nap depend …
Investigating Brainstem Mechanisms Underlying Prepulse Inhibition Of Startle Impaired In Schizophrenia, Wanyun Huang
Investigating Brainstem Mechanisms Underlying Prepulse Inhibition Of Startle Impaired In Schizophrenia, Wanyun Huang
Doctoral Dissertations
Sensorimotor gating is a fundamental pre-attentive process, which can be operationally measured through prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle response. PPI describes the suppression of the startle response when a non-startling stimulus (“prepulse”) precedes the startling stimulus (“pulse”). As a hallmark of schizophrenia, PPI deficits are also found in other neuropsychiatric disorders and are associated with cognitive overload and attention impairments (Braff et al., 2001). However, currently-used dopaminergic antipsychotics exhibit inconsistent effects on PPI in affected individuals (Geyer et al., 2001; Frau et al., 2014; Lally et al., 2016). Therefore, it’s critical to investigate the precise cellular and synaptic mechanisms …
An Investigation Of The Role Of Amygdalar Circuits In The Production Of Social Behavior, Joseph Fd Dwyer
An Investigation Of The Role Of Amygdalar Circuits In The Production Of Social Behavior, Joseph Fd Dwyer
Doctoral Dissertations
Adaptive social behaviors allow animals to survive, thrive, and successfully reproduce. These behaviors, including mating, parenting, affiliation, and aggression, can be stereotyped in response to specific stimuli but often display sex-specific, and interoceptive-dependent variations in their execution. A conserved set of brain regions collectively known as the social behavior network (SBN) interprets sensory information about social cues and generates an appropriate behavioral response. In this dissertation I present 5 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces historical research focusing on the neural circuits that drive social behavior and the potential impact of environmental factors on the activity of these circuits. Chapter 2 describes …
Head Stabilization And Cortical Activation In Contact Sport Athletes During Walking Under Different Visual Task Constraints, Sam Zeff
Doctoral Dissertations
Contact sport participation exposes athletes to repetitive sub-concussive head impacts, which have been shown to elicit cortical neurophysiologic, cognitive, and motor performance alterations that have the potential to disrupt visual perception. Despite the growing concern regarding sub-concussive impacts, our understanding of their implications on motor performance and risk for further injury is limited. A stable head provides a consistent perceptual platform for the visual and vestibular sensory systems, but the effects of contact sport participation on head stability and visual perception remain poorly understood. The goal of this dissertation was to understand whether contact sport participation modifies athletes’ ability to …
The Consolidation Of Memory Associations, Kyle A. Kainec
The Consolidation Of Memory Associations, Kyle A. Kainec
Doctoral Dissertations
Creating memories is a fundamental challenge for the human brain. To create memories, defining features of experiences must be stored distinguishably without forgetting other memories. Memory associations represent co-occurring features and defining features across experiences. Memory associations are represented as networks of information that are stored in the brain. New memory associations are encoded during experiences and can be used to update existing memory associations during offline intervals. However, the mechanisms that underlie how encoded memory associations are stored within existing networks during offline intervals remains unclear. The experiments in this dissertation address a significant theoretical gap in understanding the …
Noradrenergic Regulation Of Decision-Making In Female And Male Rats, Emma S. Dauster
Noradrenergic Regulation Of Decision-Making In Female And Male Rats, Emma S. Dauster
Doctoral Dissertations
Decision-making is regulated by many associated brain regions, including the locus coeruleus (LC) and the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Disruptions in decision-making are a key feature of many disorders including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder which is disproportionately diagnosed in one sex over another for reasons unknown. LC or its primary neurotransmitter norepinephrine (NE) have been implicated in the etiology or treatment of disrupted decision-making. Understanding the relationship among LC, PFC, and decision-making across sexes may provide insight into the basic neurobiology of cognition and disorders that lead to disrupted decision making. There are sex differences in LC anatomy, however studies investigating sex differences …
Characterizing The Roles Of The Variable Linker And Hub Domains In Camkii Activation, Noelle Dziedzic
Characterizing The Roles Of The Variable Linker And Hub Domains In Camkii Activation, Noelle Dziedzic
Doctoral Dissertations
Learning and memory formation at the cellular level involves decoding complex electrochemical signals between nerve cells, or neurons. Understanding these processes at the molecular level requires a comprehensive study of calcium-sensitive proteins that serve as signal mediators within cells. More specifically, the protein calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is a key regulator of downstream cellular signaling events in the brain, playing an important role in long term memory formation. CaMKII is encoded in humans on four different genes: alpha, beta, gamma and delta. For added complexity, each of these gene products can be alternatively spliced and translated into multiple protein …
Chemosensory Receptors In Berghia Stephanieae: Bioinformatics And Localization, Kelsi L. Watkins
Chemosensory Receptors In Berghia Stephanieae: Bioinformatics And Localization, Kelsi L. Watkins
Masters Theses
Chemosensation is achieved through the binding of chemical signals to chemoreceptor proteins embedded in the membranes of sensory neurons. The molecular identity of these receptors, as well as the downstream processing of chemosensory signals, has been well studied in arthropods and vertebrates. However, very little is known about molluscan chemosensation. The identity of chemoreceptor proteins in the nudibranch mollusc Berghia stephanieae are unknown. Data from other protostome and molluscan studies suggest Berghia may use ionotropic receptors for some forms of chemoreception. This study used a bioinformatics approach to identify potential chemosensory ionotropic receptors in the transcriptome of Berghia. A …
Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu
Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu
Doctoral Dissertations
Children that exhibit issues with externalizing behaviors often experience maladaptive outcomes in later life. Externalizing problems during middle childhood (e.g., 6-10 years old) are linked to issues with emotion regulation, which are, in turn, caused by disrupted attention and emotion reactivity to reward. Externalizing problems during this period have also been linked diminished processing of social reward stimuli, suggesting externalizing risk in children may be reflected in contrasting patterns in processing of non-social and social rewards. However, research comparing how differences in affective processing of specific reward content (i.e. social versus non-social) patterns relate to externalizing behavior within normative development …
Sex Differences In Myelin Deficits And Neuroinflammatory Responses To Adolescent Drinking In Rats, Andrea Silva-Gotay
Sex Differences In Myelin Deficits And Neuroinflammatory Responses To Adolescent Drinking In Rats, Andrea Silva-Gotay
Doctoral Dissertations
Alcohol binge drinking during adolescence is associated with higher risk of developing alcohol use disorders later in life. Alcohol can lead to decreased white matter volume, myelin damage, and neuroinflammation in animal models of adolescent binge alcohol exposure. These deficits in turn are associated with cognitive disfunctions that are long-lasting and could contribute to alcohol abuse and alcoholism later in life. Importantly, human males are more likely to develop alcohol use disorders than females, thus the mechanisms underlying this might be different between the sexes. Understanding how alcohol impacts the developing adolescent brain can help us identify molecular and cellular …
Age-Related Changes In Corticospinal Drive During Locomotor Adaptation, Sumire D. Sato
Age-Related Changes In Corticospinal Drive During Locomotor Adaptation, Sumire D. Sato
Doctoral Dissertations
During activities of daily living, locomotor patterns must be continuously adapted according to changes in our body (e.g., bodily injuries, fatigue) and to the changing environment (e.g., walking surface). Plasticity of spinal networks and supraspinal centers, including the cerebellum and cerebral cortex, have been shown to play important roles in human locomotor adaptation. However, the neural control of locomotion and the ability to adapt locomotor patterns are altered in older adults, which may limit activities of daily living and increase fall-related injuries in the elderly population. My dissertation project is focused on understanding the role of corticospinal drive during split-belt …
The Neurobiological Underpinnings Of Depression-Related Maternal Behavior Deficits, Sarah B. Winokur
The Neurobiological Underpinnings Of Depression-Related Maternal Behavior Deficits, Sarah B. Winokur
Doctoral Dissertations
Maternal caregiving is a dynamic process that requires extensive cognitive, motivational, and affective processing. World-wide, approximately 17% of mothers are diagnosed with postpartum depression yearly (Wang et al., 2021). Untreated, mothers with postpartum depression experience deficits in cognition, motivation, affect, and parenting (Arteche et al., 2011; Dix and Meunier, 2009; Lovejoy et al., 2000). Although postpartum depression is related to compromised parenting, to date, few studies have examined the neurobiological mechanisms by which maternal behavior is compromised in postpartum depression (Field, 2010; Murray et al., 1996). This dissertation aims to examine how depression neurobiologically disrupts parenting abilities. These studies …
The Time Course And Neuroanatomy Of Rhinophore Regeneration In The Nudibranch Berghia Stephanieae, Ani Maroyan
The Time Course And Neuroanatomy Of Rhinophore Regeneration In The Nudibranch Berghia Stephanieae, Ani Maroyan
Masters Theses
Within five weeks, the nudibranch, Berghia stephanieae (Gastropoda, Mollusca) can regenerate a severed rhinophore, the main olfactory appendage, such that it is indistinguishable from a non-lesioned rhinophore. The rhinophore is a 2 mm long stalk with lateral sides covered in ridges and the distal third covered in fluorescent pigmentation. Its internal morphology is dominated by longitudinal musculature, overlaid by a complex neuronal plexus, which contains neurons that express various neuroactive substances including serotonin and small cardioactive peptide (SCP). Two large nerves originate in the rhinophore ganglion at the base of the rhinophore and run the length of the rhinophore. To …
Development Of A New Behavioral Assay For Juvenile Berghia Stephanieae, Kelly E. Fischer
Development Of A New Behavioral Assay For Juvenile Berghia Stephanieae, Kelly E. Fischer
Masters Theses
Developing robust behavioral assays to study olfactory-driven behaviors allows for greater insight into the neural mechanisms behind them. Oftentimes, olfactory behavioral assays require a two-choice design, consistent variables, and controlled stimulus application. This can be challenging when working with marine dwelling organisms such as nudibranchs. Extensive work shows the importance of olfaction in both pre-metamorphic larval development and adult stage nudibranchs (Gastropoda, Mollusca). However, there is little research investigating how olfaction plays a role in rapidly developing, post-metamorphic juvenile nudibranchs such as Berghia stephanieae. To study olfactory-associated behaviors in juvenile Berghia, a novel behavioral microfluidic chip was designed which …
Role Of The Prefrontal Cortex In Reward Seeking Behaviors, Jessica Caballero-Feliciano
Role Of The Prefrontal Cortex In Reward Seeking Behaviors, Jessica Caballero-Feliciano
Doctoral Dissertations
Disorders associated with compulsive seeking of rewards, like binge-eating, are associated with abnormalities of the prefrontal cortex in humans, which is analogous to the prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) subregions of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in rodents. Although studies have examined the role of the mPFC in drug seeking behaviors, studies examining natural reward seeking behaviors (i.e. food and sucrose) are often unclear and contradictory. This dissertation aims to characterize the role of the PL and IL mPFC in operant sucrose seeking behaviors. We used pharmacological and chemogenetic tools to selectively inactivate the PL, IL and PL-nucleus accumbens (NAc) …
Sensory Representation Of Social Stimuli In Aromatase Expressing Neurons In The Medial Amygdala, Charles J. Gualtieri
Sensory Representation Of Social Stimuli In Aromatase Expressing Neurons In The Medial Amygdala, Charles J. Gualtieri
Masters Theses
The ability of animals to sense, interpret, and respond appropriately to social stimuli in their environment is essential for identifying and distinguishing between members of their own species. In mammals, social interactions both within and across species play a key role in determining if an animal will live to pass on its genes to the next generation or else be removed from the gene pool. The result of this selection pressure can be observed in specialized neural circuits that respond to social stimuli and orchestrate appropriate behavioral responses. This highly conserved network of brain structures is often referred to as …
Mental Fatigue: Examining Cognitive Performance And Driving Behavior In Young Adults, Abigail F. Helm
Mental Fatigue: Examining Cognitive Performance And Driving Behavior In Young Adults, Abigail F. Helm
Doctoral Dissertations
Mental fatigue causes an increase in task-based EEG theta and alpha power and a decrease in performance (for a review, see Tran et al., 2020). However, little is known about the emergence of mental fatigue in resting state EEG recordings and whether the progression of mental fatigue over time is influenced by individual differences. The current dissertation examined the utility of resting state EEG as a measure of mental fatigue by testing whether EEG power changed in young adults over the course of a cognitively demanding battery of tasks. The current dissertation also tested how this measure of mental fatigue …
Effects Of A Circadian Mutation On Adult Neurogenesis, Michael Bahiru
Effects Of A Circadian Mutation On Adult Neurogenesis, Michael Bahiru
Masters Theses
Rotating shift work, irregular sleep patterns and jetlag disrupt circadian rhythms, induce or aggravate disease, and produce deficits in cognitive function. Internal misalignment, a state in which abnormal phase relationships prevail between and within organs, is widely proposed to account for these adverse effects of circadian disruption. This hypothesis has been difficult to test because phase shifts of the entraining environmental cycle lead to transient desynchrony. Thus, it remains possible that phase shifts, regardless of internal desynchrony, account for adverse effects of circadian disruption. I have used the duper mutant hamster, whose locomotor activity rhythms re-entrain 5-fold faster than wild …
Studies On High-Throughput Single-Neuron Rna Sequencing And Circadian Rhythms In The Nudibranch, Berghia Stephanieae, Thi Bui
Masters Theses
One of the goals of neuroscience is to classify all of the neurons in the brain. Neuronal types can be defined using a combination of morphology, electrophysiology, and gene expression profiles. Gene expression profiles allow differentiation between cells that share similar characteristics. Leveraging the advantage of Berghia stephanieae (Gastropoda; Nudibranchia), which has around 28,000 neurons, I constructed high-throughput single-neuron transcriptomes for its whole brain. I produced a single-cell dissociation protocol and a custom data analysis pipeline for data of this nature. Around 129,000 cells were collected from 18 rhinophore ganglia and 20 circumesophageal ring ganglia (brain), consisting of the cerebropleural, …
A 4-Year Longitudinal Neuroimaging Study Of Cognitive Control Using Latent Growth Modeling: Developmental Changes And Brain-Behavior Associations, Jungmeen Kim-Spoon, Toria Herd, Alexis Brieant, Jacob Elder, Jacob Lee, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Brooks King-Casas
A 4-Year Longitudinal Neuroimaging Study Of Cognitive Control Using Latent Growth Modeling: Developmental Changes And Brain-Behavior Associations, Jungmeen Kim-Spoon, Toria Herd, Alexis Brieant, Jacob Elder, Jacob Lee, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Brooks King-Casas
Psychological and Brain Sciences Faculty Publication Series
Despite theoretical models suggesting developmental changes in neural substrates of cognitive control in adolescence, empirical research has rarely examined intraindividual changes in cognitive control-related brain activation using multi-wave multivariate longitudinal data. We used longitudinal repeated measures of brain activation and behavioral performance during the multi-source interference task (MSIT) from 167 adolescents (53% male) who were assessed annually over four years from ages 13 to 17 years. We applied latent growth modeling to delineate the pattern of brain activation changes over time and to examine longitudinal associations between brain activation and behavioral performance. We identified brain regions that showed differential change …
Circadian Regulation Of The Timing Of Pre-Ovulatory Luteinizing Hormone Surge In Mice And Hamsters, Ajay Kumar
Circadian Regulation Of The Timing Of Pre-Ovulatory Luteinizing Hormone Surge In Mice And Hamsters, Ajay Kumar
Doctoral Dissertations
Endogenous daily (circadian) oscillators ensure the proper timing of physiological and behavioral processes that are essential to health. A set of core clock genes and their protein products function in transcriptional/translational feedback loops (TTFLs) that time and coordinate vital homeostatic, cognitive, and hormonal processes. A master pacemaker in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) coordinates circadian function throughout the organism. Investigating the causal role of genetically defined cell types in the suprachiasmatic nucleus for circadian rhythms is essential to understand how an animal’s physiology is temporally organized. This thesis explores the role of molecular clocks within particular cell types in regulating physiology. …
Shared Neural Substrates Of Perception And Memory: Testing The Assumptions And Predictions Of The Representational-Hierarchical Account, D. Merika W. Sanders
Shared Neural Substrates Of Perception And Memory: Testing The Assumptions And Predictions Of The Representational-Hierarchical Account, D. Merika W. Sanders
Doctoral Dissertations
Proponents of the representational-hierarchical (R-H) account claim that memory and perception rely on shared neural representations. In the ventral visual stream, posterior brain areas are assumed to represent simple information (e.g. low-level image properties), but the complexity of representations increases toward more anterior areas, such as inferior temporal cortex (e.g., object-parts, objects), extending into the medial temporal lobe (MTL; e.g. scenes). This view predicts that brain structures along this continuum serve both memory and perception; a structure’s engagement is determined by the representational demands of a task, rather than the cognitive process putatively involved. In a neuroimaging study, I searched …
How Do Adult Songbirds Learn New Sounds? Using Neuromodulators To Probe The Function Of The Auditory Association Cortex, Matheus Macedo-Lima
How Do Adult Songbirds Learn New Sounds? Using Neuromodulators To Probe The Function Of The Auditory Association Cortex, Matheus Macedo-Lima
Doctoral Dissertations
The ability to associate sounds and outcomes is vital in the life history of many species. Animals constantly assess the soundscape for cues associated with threats, competitors, allies, mates or prey, and experience is crucial for those associations. For vocal learning species such as humans and songbirds, learning sounds (i.e. perception and association learning) is also the first step in the process of vocal learning. Auditory learning is thought to depend on high-order cortical brain structures, where sounds and meaning are bound. In songbirds, the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) is part of the auditory association cortex and is known to be …
De-Coding The Impact Of Evolved Changes In Gene Expression And Cellular Phenotype On Primate Evolution, Trisha Zintel
De-Coding The Impact Of Evolved Changes In Gene Expression And Cellular Phenotype On Primate Evolution, Trisha Zintel
Doctoral Dissertations
The goal of the dissertation work outlined here was to investigate the influence of proximal processes contributing to evolutionary differences in phenotypes among primate species. There are numerous previous comparative analyses of gene expression between primate brain regions. However, primate brain tissue samples are relatively rare, and my results have contributed to the pre-existing data on more well-studied primates (i.e. humans, chimpanzees, macaques, marmosets) as well as produced information on more rarely-studied primates (i.e. patas monkey, siamang, spider monkey). Additionally, the primary visual cortex has not previously been as extensively studied at the level of gene expression as other brain …
Function And Dissipation In Finite State Automata - From Computing To Intelligence And Back, Natesh Ganesh
Function And Dissipation In Finite State Automata - From Computing To Intelligence And Back, Natesh Ganesh
Doctoral Dissertations
Society has benefited from the technological revolution and the tremendous growth in computing powered by Moore's law. However, we are fast approaching the ultimate physical limits in terms of both device sizes and the associated energy dissipation. It is important to characterize these limits in a physically grounded and implementation-agnostic manner, in order to capture the fundamental energy dissipation costs associated with performing computing operations with classical information in nano-scale quantum systems. It is also necessary to identify and understand the effect of quantum in-distinguishability, noise, and device variability on these dissipation limits. Identifying these parameters is crucial to designing …
How Perception Of Decision Environment And Future Information Affects Changes In Delay Discounting Rates: Differences Across U.S. And China, Differences Before And After The U.S. 2018 Midterm Elections, Fran Walsh
Masters Theses
In this thesis, I will explore the idea that choices between present, smaller value options and future, larger value options depend on how much individuals trust the future to deliver the reward. Due to this aspect of trust, the individual must build their estimate of trust based on information for their present environment and their future expectations. This estimate of future trust can change across different time points in the same environment (i.e., before and after a national election) and between environments in the same time point (i.e., between two countries experiencing different economic rates of change). In this set …
Sex Specific Electrophysiology Of Aromatase Neurons In The Medial Amygdala, Marcelo Henrique Correia
Sex Specific Electrophysiology Of Aromatase Neurons In The Medial Amygdala, Marcelo Henrique Correia
Masters Theses
The medial amygdala (MeA) is a central node in the interwoven circuits that regulate social behavior based on pheromones. Aromatase-expressing (arom+) neurons in the MeA are key for the establishment and maintenance of sex differences. Here, we characterized the intrinsic electrophysiological properties of arom+ neurons and non-aromatase (arom-) neurons in the MeA of male and female mice. Most electrophysiological properties were similar for arom+ neurons in the MeA between sexes, but the relative refractory period was twice as large in female mice. We also show that the firing pattern and firing frequency is markedly …
Electrophysiological Correlates Of Natural Language Processing In Children And Adults, Margaret Ugolini
Electrophysiological Correlates Of Natural Language Processing In Children And Adults, Margaret Ugolini
Doctoral Dissertations
To understand the causes of differences in language ability we must measure the specific and separable processes that contribute to natural language comprehension. Specifically, we need measures of the three language subsystems – semantics, syntax, and phonology – as they are used during the comprehension of real speech. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) are a promising approach to reaching this level of specificity. Previous research has identified distinct ERP effects for each of the subsystems – the N400 to semantic anomalies, the Anterior Negativity and P600 to syntactic anomalies, and the Phonological Mapping Negativity to unexpected speech sounds. However, these studies typically …
Acute Estrogen Synthesis And Action In The Auditory Cortex Of Developing Male Zebra Finches (Taeniopygia Guttata), Daniel Vahaba
Acute Estrogen Synthesis And Action In The Auditory Cortex Of Developing Male Zebra Finches (Taeniopygia Guttata), Daniel Vahaba
Doctoral Dissertations
Birdsong, as with human speech, is learned during an age- and experience-dependent sensitive period early in life. Songbirds must first memorize their parents’ song during a sensory phase, then refine their own burgeoning vocalizations to match the auditory memory of their parents’ song during a sensorimotor phase. While the error-correction aspect of the sensorimotor phase of song learning is comparatively well understood, it is largely unknown how auditory memories are formed and how auditory processing may change across development to facilitate song memorization. The songbird caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) is a brain region that encodes complex communication signals like song and …
Changes In Color Guidance Over The Course Of A Complex Visual Search, Ryan Papargiris
Changes In Color Guidance Over The Course Of A Complex Visual Search, Ryan Papargiris
Masters Theses
When searching for an object, we store a mental representation of the target, which guides our search through the use of attention. The effectiveness of this search guidance varies depending on the task and the relationship between target and distractors. With a better understanding of how search guidance changes over time within a trial, we can better compare the differences between experimental conditions. Eye tracking data from a variety of search tasks were analyzed to determine how color guidance varied over the course of the trial. Color guidance for a given fixation was evaluated based on the distance in color …