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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Circuits Underlying Serotonin Mediated Sex Differences In Fear Learning, Rebecca Ravenelle
Circuits Underlying Serotonin Mediated Sex Differences In Fear Learning, Rebecca Ravenelle
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a trauma-related disorder characterized by intense fearful memory formation. Women are twice as likely as men to develop PTSD, indicating there may be sex differences in the underlying neural circuits. Given that serotonin (5-HT) dysfunction is implicated in PTSD, and 5-HT modulates fear learning, we investigated whether there are sex differences in the modulation of fear learning by 5-HT. We administered the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) citalopram (20mg/kg or 10m/kg, i.p.) once to male and female mice prior to auditory fear conditioning and tested the effects on fear memory the next day. We found …
Neural Hypervigilance In Trauma-Exposed Women, Seungyeon A. Yoon
Neural Hypervigilance In Trauma-Exposed Women, Seungyeon A. Yoon
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Trauma-exposed people often experience hypervigilance, which is a tonic condition of elevated alertness and excessive scanning for potential threat. A cardinal feature of hypervigilance is that no actual threat is needed to evoke or maintain the over-alertness and heightened affective response. However, most neuroimaging research in trauma to date has only focused on reactivity to an actual threat. Thus, the overarching aim of this dissertation was to investigate neural signatures and salivary markers of post-trauma hypervigilance in the absence of threat that can cause impairment in daily functioning and contribute to developing other trauma-related symptoms such as heightened threat reactivity. …