Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

Postexercise Executive Function And Cortical Hemodynamics During The Different Phases Of The Menstrual Cycle, Priyanka Persaud

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) is increased during the luteal (LUT) phase of the menstrual cycle; however, it is unclear whether this change impacts a postexercise executive function (EF) benefit. Female participants (N=16) performed three experimental sessions: a V̇O_2peak task and 20-min single bouts of moderate intensity aerobic exercise (i.e., 80% of lactate threshold) during their follicular (FOL) and luteal (LUT) menstrual cycle phases. A separate group of male participants (N=21) additionally completed a V̇O_2peak test and a 20-min exercise intervention. Middle cerebral artery velocity (MCAv) was measured during exercise via transcranial Doppler ultrasound to estimate CBF and …

Attention Visual, Baris Dingil

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

This research presents an innovative approach to improving visual-spatial attention using a research tool based on the web. Recognizing the significant role visual-spatial attention plays in everyday life and cognitive function for humans, this research was undertaken with the aim of developing a user-friendly, accessible web-based tool called Attention Visual (attentionvisual.com) to enhance this crucial cognitive skill. This tool also facilitates data collection, potentially accelerating the pace and enhancing the quality of related research. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized for data collection and analysis. In order to stimulate improvements in visual-spatial attention, the tool’s algorithm was structured to …

Limits To Sentience, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

There are many parallels between cellular function in animals and plants. Plants can have complex interactions with their environments. But they lack a central nervous system, which is a prerequisite for sentience (the capacity to feel). In my view the suggestion that plants are sentient is not only empirically incorrect but potentially harmful to the efforts to protect the welfare of sentient beings.

An Erp Measure Of Non-Conscious Memory Reveals Dissociable Implicit Processes In Human Recognition Using An Open-Source Automated Analytic Pipeline, Richard J. Addante, Javier Lopez-Calderon, Nathan Allen, Carter Luck, Alana Muller, Lindsey Sirianni, Cory S. Inman, Daniel L. Drake

Psychology Student Publications

Non-conscious processing of human memory has traditionally been difficult to objectively measure and thus understand. A prior study on a group of hippocampal amnesia (N = 3) patients and healthy controls (N = 6) used a novel procedure for capturing neural correlates of implicit memory using event-related potentials (ERPs): old and new items were equated for varying levels of memory awareness, with ERP differences observed from 400 to 800 ms in bilateral parietal regions that were hippocampal-dependent. The current investigation sought to address the limitations of that study by increasing the sample of healthy subjects (N = …

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Studies Investigating The Role Of The Dlpfc In Memory And Metamemory, Casey M. Imperio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory, broadly defined as knowledge about one’s own memory, is thought to consist of two separate processes, monitoring, the ability to assess the contents of your own memory, and control, altering behavior in service of memory, that work together to aide in encoding and retrieval processes. Prior work has shown that metamemory monitoring accuracy can be improved in a semantic memory task via high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS), a form of non-invasive brain stimulation, over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Over three experiments, the current dissertation sought to replicate and extend this work by: 1) testing the effects …

The Effects Of Music Therapy On Elderly Adults With Dementia, Jeante J. Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As people age, the brain is more susceptible to changes that diminish cognitive function. In recent years neuroscience has found convergent evidence between music therapy and brain architecture, as it has shown the generation of new connections in the brain or a reorganization and possible strengthening of existing connections already in the brain. However, the literature regarding music training’s effects on executive control, selective attention, and speech processing is lacking particularly when it comes to older populations.

This study investigated Verbal Working Memory, Visuospatial Attention and Task Initiation, and Auditory Selective Attention in a 91-year-old adult (B.P.) diagnosed with dementia. …

Into The Unknown: Exploring The Role Of Uncertainty In Threat-Safety Discrimination, Maia Kinney-Petrucha

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Learning to predict the arrival of threat is crucial to survival. Key to this learning process is the ability to discriminate between which stimuli signify safety and which signify threat. The extent to which a threat is uncertain impacts this ability, but which factors of uncertainty are primarily responsible remains unresolved. Uncertainty at the level of the stimulus can be examined in threat learning paradigms by adjusting threat reinforcement rate, referring to the frequency at which a cue is reinforced with an aversive stimulus. Previous research has shown that a continuous (more certain) threat reinforcement is associated with enhanced threat …

Plant Sentience: Getting To The Roots Of The Problem, Krzysztof Dolega, Savannah Siekierski, Axel Cleeremans

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin’s (2023) target article invites us to consider the possibility that plants can experience subjectively felt states. We discuss this speculation on the basis of the functional neurobiology of consciousness. We suggest that demonstrating plant sentience would require that we identify not only behaviors analogous to those exhibited by sentient creatures, but also the functional analogues of the mechanisms causing such behaviors. The lack of clear evidence for any kind of integration between self-states, self-movement, environmental states, memory, or affective communication within plants suggests that plant sentience remains an admittedly fascinating, but ultimately merely provocative speculation.

Dissociation Between Conscious And Unconscious Processes As A Criterion For Sentience, Ivan Ivanchei, Nicolas Coucke, Axel Cleeremans

Animal Sentience

Based on the literature on human consciousness, we suggest that to demonstrate sentience in a system, one needs to demonstrate both conscious and unconscious processing in the system. Major theories of consciousness require the existence of both conscious and unconscious processes. Contrasting effects of conscious and unconscious processes have been successfully used in human studies and have begun being applied in animal sentience research as well.

Disentangling Sentience From Developmental Plasticity, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

Plants, like animals, display remarkable developmental plasticity, inviting the metaphorical use of terms like “decision” and “choice”. In the animal case, this is not taken to be evidence of sentience, because sentience is a complex product of development, not something that guides it. We should apply the same standards when evaluating the evidence in plants. It is hard to overstate the contrast with the case of invertebrates such as octopuses, where pain markers that were originally developed for use in mammals have been clearly demonstrated and plausible neural substrates for sentience have been identified.

Active Encoding Of Space Through Time, Michele Rucci, Jonathan D. Victor

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Dynamical Model Of Binding In Visual Cortex During Incremental Grouping And Search, Daniel Schmid, Daniel A. Braun, Heiko Neumann

MODVIS Workshop

Binding of visual information is crucial for several perceptual tasks. To incrementally group an object, elements in a space-feature neighborhood need to be bound together starting from an attended location (Roelfsema, TICS, 2005). To perform visual search, candidate locations and cued features must be evaluated conjunctively to retrieve a target (Treisman&Gormican, Psychol Rev, 1988). Despite different requirements on binding, both tasks are solved by the same neural substrate. In a model of perceptual decision-making, we give a mechanistic explanation for how this can be achieved. The architecture consists of a visual cortex module and a higher-order thalamic module. While the …

Sleep Duration Is Associated With Caudate Volume And Executive Function, Nicole Jones

Honors Theses

The ineligible role of the caudate nucleus in sleep has been implicated throughout multiple scientific studies. Previous literature has shown that greater caudate volume is associated with longer habitual sleep duration in older adults- ranging from 55 years of age and up. However, the association between sleep duration and caudate volume remains unknown in the younger population. In this study, we examined the caudate volume in youth to older adults (10 to 85 years old) with a greater sample size (N=464) to increase statistical power. The volumetric size of the caudate nucleus showed significantly positive association with habitual sleep duration, …

Local Field Potentials In The Male Rat Nucleus Accumbens During Effort-Based Behavior, Celine Aliko, John Salamone, Alev Ecevitoglu

Honors Scholar Theses

Major depression is a devastating disorder that consists of multiple symptoms such as low mood and motivational dysfunction. It has been shown that motivational dysfunction can be studied in animal models by using effort-based choice paradigms, which vary in their response requirements. It has been reported that dopamine depletion in the nucleus accumbens decreases ratio-scheduled lever-pressing in a manner related to the size of the ratio requirement. One dopamine depleting agent is tetrabenazine (TBZ), which has been shown to decrease lever-pressing and induce low-effort bias. The current study aims to investigate behavioral and electrophysiological changes that occur with animals performing …

The Effects Of Acute Exercise On Memory: Considerations Of The Testing Effect, Philip Christian

Honors Theses

This study had three main objectives. The first objective was to determine whether or not there was evidence of a testing effect being present when a short-term memory assessment is included along with a long-term memory assessment. The second objective was to determine whether acute exercise can improve long-term memory recall over a control condition. The third objective was to determine if the potential effects of acute exercise on long-term memory are confounded by the inclusion of a short-term memory assessment. Participants were 54 undergraduate students at the University of Mississippi, with an age range of 18-22 years old. Participants …

Consolidated Chamber Design And Protocol For Olfactory Conditioning Assay With Drosophila Melanogaster, Sasha Bronovitskiy, Andres Castillo, Michael Yan, Fang Ju Lin

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

The olfactory conditioning assay is widely used in Alzheimer’s disease research to quantify learning and memory in Drosophila melanogaster. The assay tests ability to recall an aversive conditioned stimulus of scent paired with electrical shock when presented a choice between shock-associated and unrelated scents. The T-maze, a commonly used apparatus for olfactory conditioning assays, employs an elevator mechanism to transfer live flies from the shock-delivering training chamber to the scent selection point. This elevator mechanism is known to cause fly casualty. T-mazes are not commercially available and often difficult to reproduce. Other existing variations of olfactory conditioning apparatuses use …

Do Plants Have The Cognitive Complexity For Sentience?, Ricard V. Solé

Animal Sentience

Are plants sentient? Like other aspects of the cognitive potential of plants, this is a controversial issue, often driven by analogies and seldom supported on solid theoretical grounds. Sentience is understood in cognitive sciences as the capacity to feel. I suggest that because of plants’ evolved adaptations to morphological plasticity, sessile nature and ecological constraints, they are unlikely to have the requisite cognitive complexity for sentience.

Discovering Distinct Patterns Of Alpha Activity In Adults With Inattentive Adhd Using Electroencephalography, Lucy Salter '23

Senior Research Symposium

According to data collected and analyzed by researchers, it has been estimated that roughly 8.7 million adults live with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), resulting in an estimated $122.8 billion in excess societal costs due to increased healthcare costs, unemployment, and loss of productivity all of which are linked to ADHD symptoms (Schein et al., 2022). Additionally, literature suggests that adult ADHD is associated with increased risk of imprisonment and substance abuse, decreased educational achievement, increased comorbid psychiatric conditions, and poorer clinical outcomes (Ginsberg et al., 2014). Although there is a relatively clearer understanding about ADHD in adolescents, particularly the hyperactive ADHD …

Effects Of Acute And Repeated Alcohol Exposure On Expression Of Synaptic-Associated Genes In The Male And Female Mouse Mpfc, Dhruba Podder

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a serious chronic brain disease; in 2021 there were ~29.5 million people in the U.S. diagnosed with AUD. Individuals with AUD often show cognitive impairment such as risky decision-making, difficulties with impulse control, and working memory deficits. This impairment is associated with structural and functional changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an extensively interconnected region of the frontal lobe involved in executive control of goal-directed behaviors. Chronic alcohol exposure in rodents has been seen to cause deficits in performance in behavioral tasks which assess mPFC function such as working memory and behavioral flexibility. It is …