Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Commons^™

Rehabilitative Movement Approaches And Dance Interventions In Parkinson’S Disease, Cecilia Fontanesi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The scope of this work is to address the functional deficits and symptoms experienced by those living with Parkinson’s Disease through movement interventions.

Chapter 1 offers a brief overview of current pharmacotherapy and rehabilitation approaches in Parkinson’s, focusing on dance in particular as a movement intervention that may be particularly suited to this population.

Chapter 2 focuses on brain plasticity and motor learning in PD, reporting the effects of rTMS applied after the acquisition of a motor skill. In this study, adaptation tested in patients with PD was comparable in the sham and TMS sessions, while retention indices tested on …

Preliminary Evidence Of The Role Of Medial Prefrontal Cortex In Self-Enhancement: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study, Birgitta Taylor-Lillquist, Vivek Kanpa, Maya Crawford, Mehdi El Filali, Julia Oakes, Alex Jonasz, Amanda Disney, Julian Keenan

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Humans employ a number of strategies to improve their position in their given social hierarchy. Overclaiming involves presenting oneself as having more knowledge than one actually possesses, and it is typically invoked to increase one’s social standing. If increased expectations to possess knowledge is a perceived social pressure, such expectations should increase bouts of overclaiming. As the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is sensitive to social pressure and disruption of the MPFC leads to decreases in overclaiming, we predicted that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied to the MPFC would reduce overclaiming and the effects would be enhanced in the presence of …

Axonal Regrowth Of Olfactory Sensory Neurons After Chemical Ablation And Removal Of Axonal Debris By Microglia, Rudy Chapman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are contained within the olfactory epithelium (OE) and are responsible for detecting odorant molecules in the air. The exposure of OSNs to the external environment is necessary for their function, but it also leaves them exposed to potentially harmful elements and thus results in a high turnover rate. Despite the high turnover, the olfactory sense is maintained throughout life through the division of a population of stem cells that produce new OSNs both during normal turnover and after an injury occurs in the OE. When new OSNs are born, they must extend axons from the OE …

Elevated Cochlear Adenosine Causes Hearing Loss Via Adora2b Signaling, Jeanne Manalo

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Over 538 million people in the world have been diagnosed with hearing loss (HL). Current treatments for the most common type of HL, sensorineural HL, are limited to hearing aids and cochlear implants with no FDA-drugs available. The hearing process demands an abundance of ATP and HL is often attributed to a disruption in this metabolic energy currency. Patients who lack adenosine deaminase (ADA), the enzyme that irreversibly metabolizes adenosine, have high levels of adenosine that yield severe health problems, including HL; however, the pathogenic mechanisms behind HL and adenosine remain elusive. Our lab has found a HL phenotype in …

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 …

The Current Neuroscientific Understanding Of Alzheimer's Disease, Rachel A. Brandes

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative neurological illness characterized by the deterioration of brain regions implicated in memory and cognitive function. While researchers have yet to find a cure or effective treatment, they have gained a better understanding of its pathology and development. Through years of neuroscience research, scientists have discovered much of what happens in the brain during Alzheimer’s disease onset and how this causes its symptoms; many hypotheses regarding this aspect of the illness involve temporal lobe atrophy, neurofibrillary tangles, and amyloid plaques. Although Alzheimer’s disease affects millions of people every day, it seems that most are unaware of …

Tissue-Specific Regulation Of Pnmt By Intron Retention During Neural Development, Meeti Mehta

Digital Repository: Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence

No abstract provided.

Apoe As A Metabolic Regulator In Humans, Mice, And Astrocytes, Brandon C. Farmer

Theses and Dissertations--Physiology

Altered metabolic pathways appear to play central roles in the pathophysiology of late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Carrier status of the E4 allele of the APOE gene is the strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset AD, and increasing evidence suggests that E4 carriers may be at an increased risk for neurodegeneration based on inherent metabolic impairments. A new appreciation is forming for the role of APOE in cerebral metabolism, and how nutritional factors may impact this role. In chapter 1, the literature on nutritional interventions in E4 carriers aimed at mitigating disease risk is reviewed. Studies investigating the mechanism by which …

Biomechanics And Neural Control Of Movement: Cmi's Effects On Downstream Motor Processing And Gait In Forwards And Backwards Walking, Christopher Choi

CMC Senior Theses

Analyzing the effects of cognitive motor interferences (CMI) on walking is usually done in patients with neurological comorbidity or during forward walking (FW). However, there are few studies that examine gait differences between FW and backward walking (BW) under the presence of CMI when speed is kept constant on a treadmill. In this study we examined how CMI would disrupt sensory feedback and affect the descending motor pathway. We hypothesized that subjects that walked backwards and were given a cognitive task would show the greatest differences in gait due to a lack of visual input and the presence of CMI. …

The Wiring Logic Of Identified Serotonergic Neurons Across Olfactory Networks In Drosophila, Kaylynn E. Coates

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Serotonin is a ubiquitous neuromodulator that confers flexibility in networks to modulate a wide array of behavioral and physiological processes. However, due to the complexity and heterogeneity of serotonergic systems, it has been challenging to determine the patterns of connectivity as well as the physiological contexts that influence individual serotonin neurons. In this dissertation, I use two serotonergic neurons which innervate the Drosophila olfactory system, the CSDns, as a model to explore these broad questions comprehensively using anatomical approaches. I first show that the CSDns have distinct connectivity relationships with populations of antennal lobe principal olfactory neurons and that their …