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Theses/Dissertations

2021

Anxiety

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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Light Level Intensity Alters Anxiety, But Not Memory, During Open-Field And Novel Object Location Tasks In Male Rats, Angelina Tassone Dec 2021

Light Level Intensity Alters Anxiety, But Not Memory, During Open-Field And Novel Object Location Tasks In Male Rats, Angelina Tassone

Biological Sciences

Appropriate design and control of testing conditions during assessment of animal behavior is critical to maximize generalizability, replicability, and translational relevance. Some sensory stimuli are often controlled: for instance, during rodent behavioral testing, efforts are commonly made to reduce or eliminate olfactory and auditory distractions. However, less attention is paid to the ambient light level intensity (lux), which may vary even between rooms in the same facility. We sought to explore whether behavior is influenced by the standard illumination intensity in one of our behavioral testing rooms. To this end, we measured anxiety-like behaviors, exploration, and spatial memory performance in …

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Modulation Of Stress-Induced Behaviors Through Orexinergic Signaling In The Basolateral Amygdala, Jazmine D W Yaeger Dec 2021

Modulation Of Stress-Induced Behaviors Through Orexinergic Signaling In The Basolateral Amygdala, Jazmine D W Yaeger

Dissertations and Theses

Stress initiates behavioral disturbances, which are often seen as symptoms of psychiatric disorders, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. While stress is involved in the formation of disordered states, only certain individuals are vulnerable to, and therefore experience, these outcomes. Further, females are more likely to be diagnosed with stress-induced psychiatric disorders. Elements within stress neurocircuitry offer insight into differential behavioral outcomes associated with stressful experiences; and the basolateral amygdala (BLA), where pro- and anti-stress signals are integrated, is likely an important mediator in phenotype development. The orexin system, too, while being strongly associated with sleep, motivation, and …

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Determining The Psychosocial Needs Of The Nurses Of Covid-19 Patients, Allison Stevens Dec 2021

Determining The Psychosocial Needs Of The Nurses Of Covid-19 Patients, Allison Stevens

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

Nurses are a vital element of the COVID-19 healthcare crisis and have been since the beginning of the COVID-19 response. The professional strain put on nurses included, but is not limited to: changing professional roles, rapidly changing policies and procedures, an influx of patients—particularly of high acuity, and change in workplace morale. However, nurses also had to carry the burdens of living as a member of society, family member, friend, community member, and above all, simply as a person surviving a pandemic themselves. With all of the stressors nurses have endured, it stands to reason that their psychosocial needs have …

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Sex Differences In Context Fear Neural Circuitry And Behavior Across Development, Lorianna Marie Colon Dec 2021

Sex Differences In Context Fear Neural Circuitry And Behavior Across Development, Lorianna Marie Colon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Over the span of five decades, staggering progress has been made in elucidating the neural circuits involved in fear learning. Research focused on rodents and healthy individuals has been instrumental in elucidating how abnormalities in this circuitry may lend to increased prevalence of various fear and anxiety disorders. However, many of the key findings concerning the acquisition, storage, and retrieval of fear memories have been established in the adult male rodent, leaving a gap in knowledge as to whether females and developing animals process fear and stress inducing information in a similar fashion. Compared to men, women are twice as …

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Neural Substrates Of Fear Generalization And Its Associations With Anxiety And Intolerance Of Uncertainty, Ashley Ann Huggins Aug 2021

Neural Substrates Of Fear Generalization And Its Associations With Anxiety And Intolerance Of Uncertainty, Ashley Ann Huggins

Theses and Dissertations

Fear generalization - the tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening due to perceptual similarity to a learned threat – is an adaptive process. Overgeneralization, however, is maladaptive and has been implicated in a number of anxiety disorders. Neuroimaging research has indicated several regions sensitive to effects of generalization, including regions involved in fear excitation (e.g., amygdala, insula) and inhibition (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Research has suggested several other small brain regions may play an important role in this process (e.g., hippocampal subfields, bed nucleus of the stria terminalis [BNST], habenula), but, to date, these regions have not been examined …

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Cerebellum-Seeded Functional Connectivity Changes In Trait-Anxious Individuals Undergoing Attention Bias Modification Training, Katherine Elwell Jul 2021

Cerebellum-Seeded Functional Connectivity Changes In Trait-Anxious Individuals Undergoing Attention Bias Modification Training, Katherine Elwell

All NMU Master's Theses

Anxiety and anxiety related disorders are increasing at a drastic rate in the past decade, with the NIMH reporting that 31.1% of U.S. adults will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Anxiety is commonly characterized by increased attention bias to threat. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) is a new treatment used to reduce individual’s attention bias towards threat. The extent to which ABM leads to underlying neural changes is still unknown. The cerebellum is a neglected brain structure, with new research provides evidence that cerebellum’s functional connectivity and shared networks with threat processing regions has a direct …

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Targeting Ampa Receptor Modulation During Early Life Adversity: A Mediator For Threat Associated Memories, Roseanna M. Zanca Jun 2021

Targeting Ampa Receptor Modulation During Early Life Adversity: A Mediator For Threat Associated Memories, Roseanna M. Zanca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Early life adversity (ELA) is the exposure to a single or to multiple traumatic events before the age of 18 that go beyond the child’s coping. These adverse events are often exacerbated during adolescence particularly when cognitive performance is compromised. Adolescents who experienced ELA may show symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while not vividly recalling the early life trauma. These individuals show atypical connectivity between prefrontal-amygdala and hippocampus, all of which is associated with an increased risk of experiencing a traumatic event again later in life. While clinical research has increasingly stressed the importance in addressing the long-lasting consequences …

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Learning To Feel Safe: A Translational Study Of The Influence Of Safety Learning On Anxiety-Related Overgeneralized Fear, Hyein Cho Jun 2021

Learning To Feel Safe: A Translational Study Of The Influence Of Safety Learning On Anxiety-Related Overgeneralized Fear, Hyein Cho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health diagnoses, affecting about a third of the population in their lifetime. However, approximately a third of individuals with anxiety do not respond to current treatment approaches, highlighting the need to identify additional potential therapeutic mechanisms. Safety learning is one such mechanism, but methodological challenges and a dearth of research have prevented the field from advancing the understanding of the role of safety learning in the etiology and remediation of anxiety disorders. Animal research, using single-cued safety learning paradigms, has yielded promising early findings, demonstrating that safety learning directly reduces anxiety-related behaviors …

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Exploring The Usefulness Of Mindfulness Practices Through Zoom Meetings In Reducing Anxiety And/Or Stress Of Adults With Learning And Developmental Disabilities During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Thatiane Abra May 2021

Exploring The Usefulness Of Mindfulness Practices Through Zoom Meetings In Reducing Anxiety And/Or Stress Of Adults With Learning And Developmental Disabilities During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Thatiane Abra

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This thesis explored which mindfulness meditations or mindfulness practices could be beneficial in the online sessions, the extent to which adults with learning and developmental disabilities could learn the practices remotely, and how stress and anxiety disorders could be reduced through online mindfulness interventions. Furthermore, it was also necessary to address the online sessions as the only mental health treatment possibility during the Coronavirus pandemic for the clients observed and the benefits and limitations of these interventions. Additionally, the importance of structure and routine for this population, the multi-modal structure of the interventions, and how attunement plays an important role …

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Behavioral, Physiological, And Molecular Characterization Of Long-Term Administration Of A Novel Estrogen Receptor Beta Agonist In A Mouse Model Of Menopause, Aaron William Fleischer May 2021

Behavioral, Physiological, And Molecular Characterization Of Long-Term Administration Of A Novel Estrogen Receptor Beta Agonist In A Mouse Model Of Menopause, Aaron William Fleischer

Theses and Dissertations

The menopausal loss of circulating hormones, including estrogens, is associated with negative symptoms, such as hot flashes, anxiety and depression, cognitive decline, and weight gain. Although estrogenic hormone therapies (HT) prevent many of the negative symptoms related to the menopausal transition, these same therapies are associated with increased health risks, such as the development of breast and ovarian cancers, which is mediated by the activation of the a (ERa), but not b (ERb), estrogen receptor isoform. Furthermore, ERb agonism has previously been shown to reduce preclinical indices of hot flashes, memory decline, anxiety, and depression. As most ERb agonists are …

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Neural Correlates Underlying The Interactions Between Anxiety And Cannabis Use In Predicting Motor Response Inhibition, Richard Ward May 2021

Neural Correlates Underlying The Interactions Between Anxiety And Cannabis Use In Predicting Motor Response Inhibition, Richard Ward

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to effectively withhold an inappropriate response is a critical feature of cognitive control. Prior research indicates alterations in neural processes required for motor response inhibition in anxious individuals, including those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and those who engage in regular cannabis use. However, thus far most research has examined how anxiety-related symptoms and cannabis use influence response inhibition in isolation of one another. The current study examined the interactions between anxious symptomology and recent cannabis use in a sample that recently experienced a traumatic event using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during the completion of a Stop-Signal …

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Effects Of A Mental Skills Training Program On Performance In Distance Runners, Neil Patrick Bangs May 2021

Effects Of A Mental Skills Training Program On Performance In Distance Runners, Neil Patrick Bangs

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Anxiety affects nearly 20% of the United States population and can have a significant impact on athletic performance. However, athletes can mitigate the effects of performance anxiety through the use of mental skills and mindfulness training. Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine if a mental training and mindfulness intervention could reduce anxiety and enhance performance in distance runners. Hypothesis: The hypothesis of the study was that athletes would experience less anxiety, increased levels of mindfulness, and improved performance following a four-workshop intervention. Methods: Distance runners engaged in a mental skills and mindfulness training program where we …

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Long-Term Impacts Of Acute Stressor Exposure On Locus Coeruleus Function And Anxiety-Like Behavior In Rats, Olga Borodovitsyna Apr 2021

Long-Term Impacts Of Acute Stressor Exposure On Locus Coeruleus Function And Anxiety-Like Behavior In Rats, Olga Borodovitsyna

Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Stress is a physiological state characterized by behavioral arousal that occurs during exposure to harmful or threatening stimuli, and usually facilitates an adaptive behavioral response. The persistence of stress sometimes causes it to become maladaptive, potentially contributing to disease development, including physiological complications with altered neuroendocrine signaling and impaired function of organ systems, and psychological conditions including depression and anxiety. Anxiety disorders in particular are associated with a history of stress and are the most common class of mental disorders, with a lifetime prevalence of 33.7% in the general population. The locus coeruleus (LC) is a major node in the …

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The Effect Of Gonadal Steroids Following Repeat Mild Traumatic Brain Injury On Anxiety-Like Behaviors In Rats, Trevor Nykamp Jan 2021

The Effect Of Gonadal Steroids Following Repeat Mild Traumatic Brain Injury On Anxiety-Like Behaviors In Rats, Trevor Nykamp

Master's Theses

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects millions of people in the U.S. each year. This thesis worked to address anxiety, a common emotional symptom following TBI, by utilizing a five-hit repeat mild TBI (rmTBI) experimental model. First, changes in gonadal status following injury and the severity of anxiety symptoms experienced were investigated. Our data revealed that suppressed testosterone levels following rmTBI resulted in significantly more anxiety-like behaviors across several observational variables. Even more, some of these behaviors were reduced by providing testosterone supplementation immediately following injury.Another goal of this work was to investigate the role of mitochondrial dysfunction, measured by COX4i1 …

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Inulin-Containing Fructo-Oligosaccharides And Anxiety Scores In College Students, Spencer Herkes Jan 2021

Inulin-Containing Fructo-Oligosaccharides And Anxiety Scores In College Students, Spencer Herkes

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of inulin, in the form of fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS), on anxiety symptoms in college students. With a prevalence of 40 million adults in the United States, or 18.1% of the population, anxiety is the most common mental illness in the United States. Previous studies have viewed gut microbiota and its potential link to anxiety both in humans and in mice. However, no previous studies viewed college students. Thirteen subjects were assigned to receive either 4.9 g per day of inulin as a treatment (TX) or no supplement as a control (CON) …

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