Behavioral Neurobiology Commons^™

Biological Motion Processing In Typical Development And In The Autism Spectrum, Aaron Krakowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Biological motion (BM) analysis and interpretation is a fundamental process of human neurocognition that has been only minimally explored neurophysiologically. In addition to its importance in understanding the underlying roots and development of social cognition, BM processing is a prime candidate domain for exploring the underlying etiology of social cognitive disorders such as the autism spectrum.

In an initial experiment, typical adults observed BM point-light displays of a human actor (UM) as well as their spatially scrambled counterparts (SM), in both an unattended distractor task as well as an explicit attention task. Results showed a neurophysiological response manifested as three …

The Effects Of Environmental Enrichment On Abstinence And Relapse Using An Animal Conflict Model, Joshua Alan Peck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heroin addiction is a significant health and societal problem for which there is no effective and well-accepted long-term behavioral or pharmacological treatment. Therefore, strategies that prolong heroin abstinence should be the primary focus of heroin treatment research. There is promising evidence that environmental enrichment may indeed support drug abstinence in animals using the reinstatement model of abstinence and relapse. The current studies used an animal conflict model that captures the aversive consequences of drug seeking (as are typical in humans, e.g., arrest, incarceration, job loss, and strained social relationships) to test the effects of environmental enrichment on heroin abstinence, prolonged …

A Behavioral And Biopsychological Investigation Of The Role Of The Illusion Of Control And Perseverative Chasing Between Problem And Non-Problem Gamblers, Brett Evan Bauchner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The illusion of control is associated with problem gambling. The perception that one is in control of a random event, when in reality there is no control, can facilitate problem gambling behaviors. The degree or extent of control may activate physiological mechanism of increased excitation and reward that reinforce gambling. In the studies presented here, performance on simulated gambling tasks that provided varying levels gambling participation were compared to physiological measures of behavioral activation in problem gambler and nongamblers. Participants watched video clips of three horseraces scenarios that permitted different degrees of participation and control over wagering. Concurrently saliva samples …

Psychic Collapse And Traumatic Defense: How The Mind Mediates Trauma Living In The Body, Patricia Kim Yoon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this exploratory study was to link psychoanalytic theories of trauma and its impact on the mind with psychobiological research of how trauma lives in the body. The study has expanded on prior research (Cramer, 2003) to evidence that defense mechanisms do in fact moderate the relationship between stress and physiological response, and that there are likely individual differences in physiological response to traumatic stress. This study goes further to identify the psychological concomitants of these individual differences within an adult population exposed to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), and their proclivity for using different defense mechanisms. Defense use …

Quantitative Evaluation Of Microglial Activation And Vascularization In Suicide, Tatiana Pavlovna Schnieder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Accumulated evidence points to immunological factors in psychiatric disorders. In a variety of chronic neurological disorders, exacerbation is associated with inflammation and a loss of integrity of the blood-brain barrier. Microglia, the principal brain immunological cells in the healthy state, respond to changes in the internal environment of the brain through a sequence of activated states. This study compared microglial phenotypes in the white matter of autopsy brains from 11 suicide victims and 25 subjects who died involuntarily. Both groups included cases with and without major psychiatric disorders, which were determined by PA interviews. Cases were matched for sex, age, …

Supraspinal And Spinal Mechanisms Of Morphine-Induced Hyperalgesia, Caroline A. Arout

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morphine is the most prominent pharmacological treatment for moderate to severe pain in both acute and chronic paradigms. However, morphine notoriously elicits a paradoxical state of increased pain sensitivity known as hyperalgesia that complicates its use in clinical application. Research over the past three decades has reported that morphine-induced hyperalgesia is dose- and sex-dependent, and likely involves the synchronous activity of several neural networks beyond the opioid system. Whereas systemic, supraspinal, and spinal administration of morphine all cause hyperalgesia that is differentially reversible by N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonists or melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) antagonists, it is unknown as to whether or …