Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Drosophila Model For Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders: Role For The Insulin Pathway, Rachael L. French, K D. Mcclure, U Heberlein

Faculty Publications, Biological Sciences

Prenatal exposure to ethanol in humans results in a wide range of developmental abnormalities, including growth deficiency, developmental delay, reduced brain size, permanent neurobehavioral abnormalities and fetal death. Here we describe the use of Drosophila melanogaster as a model for exploring the effects of ethanol exposure on development and behavior. We show that developmental ethanol exposure causes reduced viability, developmental delay and reduced adult body size. We find that flies reared on ethanol-containing food have smaller brains and imaginal discs, which is due to reduced cell division rather than increased apoptosis. Additionally, we show that, as in mammals, flies reared …

The Neural Substrates Of Multisensory Speech Perception, Audrey R. Nath

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Comprehending speech is one of the most important human behaviors, but we are only beginning to understand how the brain accomplishes this difficult task. One key to speech perception seems to be that the brain integrates the independent sources of information available in the auditory and visual modalities in a process known as multisensory integration. This allows speech perception to be accurate, even in environments in which one modality or the other is ambiguous in the context of noise. Previous electrophysiological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments have implicated the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) in auditory-visual integration of …

Modeling Hemorrhagic Stroke And Vasospasm In The Rodent, Sarah Katherine Jane Wendel

Honors Capstone Projects - All

In January 2010, I started work as an undergraduate research assistant at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Dr. Mary Lou Vallano’s laboratory in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology. My research project was part of a collaborative effort with the laboratory of Dr. Eric Deshaies, a vascular neurosurgeon at Upstate. The goal was to establish a rodent model of subarachnoid hemorrhage and delayed vasospasm, and to test possible protective strategies. We used an adult rat model, in which two injections of autologous blood were given in the cisterna magna region of the brain. Analysis was done using a combination of …

Second-Order Conditioning In Drosophila, Christopher J. Tabone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Animals possess the ability to associate neutral stimuli in their environment with both rewards and punishment. A conditioned stimulus (CS1) such as a smell or sound, can become associated with an unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a food reward, to elicit what is known as the conditioned response (CR). This type of learning is commonly referred to as classical conditioning or first-order conditioning (FOC). Second-order conditioning (SOC) is an extension of this type of association wherein a novel stimulus is introduced (CS2) and associated with a previously conditioning first-order stimulus (CS1). As a result, the organism may show an attraction …

Drosophila Model For Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders: Role For The Insulin Pathway, Rachael L. French, K D. Mcclure, U Heberlein

Rachael L. French

Prenatal exposure to ethanol in humans results in a wide range of developmental abnormalities, including growth deficiency, developmental delay, reduced brain size, permanent neurobehavioral abnormalities and fetal death. Here we describe the use of Drosophila melanogaster as a model for exploring the effects of ethanol exposure on development and behavior. We show that developmental ethanol exposure causes reduced viability, developmental delay and reduced adult body size. We find that flies reared on ethanol-containing food have smaller brains and imaginal discs, which is due to reduced cell division rather than increased apoptosis. Additionally, we show that, as in mammals, flies reared …

Cocaine Dependence: The Role Of Serotonin Genes In, Lorena Maili

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Animal studies have shown that behavioral responses to cocaine-related cues are altered by serotonergic medications. The effects of pharmacological agents on serotonin receptors 2a (5-HT2A) and 2c (5-HT2C), have yielded results suggesting that selective 5-HT2A antagonists and 5-HT2C agonists promote the disruption of cocaine-associated memories. One measure of cocaine related cues in humans is attentional bias, in which cocaine dependent individuals show greater response latency for cocaine related words than neutral words. Data from our laboratory shows that cocaine dependent subjects have altered attentional bias compared to controls. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the role of the …

Massively Parallel Nonparametrics [Hds 2011 Slides], Philip T. Reiss, Lei Huang

Philip T. Reiss

No abstract provided.

Chimpanzee Vocal Signaling Points To A Multimodal Origin Of Human Language, Jared P. Taglialatela, Jamie L. Russell, Jennifer A. Schaeffer, William D. Hopkins

Faculty and Research Publications

The evolutionary origin of human language and its neurobiological foundations has long been the object of intense scientific debate. Although a number of theories have been proposed, one particularly contentious model suggests that human language evolved from a manual gestural communication system in a common ape-human ancestor. Consistent with a gestural origins theory are data indicating that chimpanzees intentionally and referentially communicate via manual gestures, and the production of manual gestures, in conjunction with vocalizations, activates the chimpanzee Broca’s area homologue – a region in the human brain that is critical for the planning and execution of language. However, it …

Chemical Defenses Of Aplysia Californica And Sensory Processing By Predatory Fishes, Matthew Nusnbaum

Neuroscience Institute Dissertations

In predator-prey interactions, prey species have complex defensive behaviors to protect themselves from predators. Chemical defenses are one tool that is employed to protect against predators, especially for slow-moving or otherwise susceptible prey. Many of these chemical defenses have been studied and the effective compounds identified, but few studies were performed on their mechanisms of detection.

In my research, I used the sea hare, Aplysia californica, as chemically defended prey. This slow moving mollusk is soft-bodied with no external shell, but it has adapted a number of defenses including chemical defenses. Ink is a sticky mixture of the products …

Dissociable And Dynamic Components Of Cognitive Control: A Developmental Electrophysiological Investigation, Matthew Waxer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One standard task used to investigate the development of cognitive control is the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS). Performance and patterns of brain activity associated with the DCCS show continued age-related advances into early adolescence. According to many theoretical accounts, the DCCS places demands on a single underlying executive control process. Three experiments examined the possibility that the DCCS places demands on multiple control processes that follow distinct developmental trajectories. In Experiment 1, rule switching and conflict processing made orthogonal contributions to DCCS performance. Rule switching was associated with a cue-locked late frontal negativity (LFN) event-related potential (ERP) and conflict …

Analysis Of Morris Water Maze Data With Bayesian Statistical Methods, Maxym V. Myroshnychenko, Anton Westveld, Jefferson Kinney

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

Neuroscientists commonly use a Morris Water Maze to assess learning in rodents. In his kind of a maze, the subjects learn to swim toward a platform hidden in opaque water as they orient themselves according to the cues on the walls. This protocol presents a challenge to statistical analysis, because an artificial cut-off must be set for those experimental subjects that do not reach the platform so as they do not drown from exhaustion. This fact leads to the data being right censored. In our experimental data, which compares learning in rodents that have chemically induced symptoms of schizophrenia to …

Aging Is Associated With Positive Responding To Neutral Information But Reduced Recovery From Negative Information, Carien M. Van Reekum, Stacey M. Schaefer, Regina C. Lapate, Catherine J. Norris, Lawrence L. Greischar, Richard J. Davidson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Studies on aging and emotion suggest an increase in reported positive affect, a processing bias of positive over negative information, as well as increasingly adaptive regulation in response to negative events with advancing age. These findings imply that older individuals evaluate information differently, resulting in lowered reactivity to, and/or faster recovery from, negative information, while maintaining more positive responding to positive information. We examined this hypothesis in an ongoing study on Midlife in the US (MIDUS II) where emotional reactivity and recovery were assessed in a large number of respondents (N = 159) from a wide age range (36–84 …

Analyses Of Spinal Cord Mononuclear Cells Following Spinal Nerve L5 Transection-Induced Neuropathic Pain In Wild Type, Cd4 Knockout, And Cd40 Knockout Mice, Holly Beaulac

All Theses And Dissertations

CD4⁺ T cells and CD40, highly expressed in activated microglia, along with microglia themselves have been demonstrated to contribute to mechanical hypersensitivity in a murine model of neuropathic pain, spinal nerve L5 transection (L5Tx). This study investigated whether CD4 and CD40 mediate their effects by affecting spinal cord microglial responses and/or leukocyte infiltration into the spinal cord. L5Tx was performed on wild type (WT), CD4 knockout (KO), and CD40 KO mice. Mononuclear cells from the lumbar spinal cord were collected and the total number of microglia (CD45^loCD11b⁺) and infiltrating leukocytes (CD45^hi) were analyzed …

Modulation Of Glutamate-Mediated Neuronal Cell Death By Neurosteroids, Benjamin J. Phelps

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and permanent disability in the United States. Approximately 1.7 million cases of TBI are reported annually. After an injury to the head, excessive glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter, is released into the extracellular fluid resulting in the excitotoxic death of neuronal tissue. Recent studies have suggested neurosteroids, may serve as an effective means by which to modulate excitotoxicity via the excitatory neurotransmitter alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA). Using mixed astrocyte-neuronal cell cultures (14-16 DIV) exposed to increasing concentrations of AMPA as the model for TBI, the experiments examined the effect of the neurosteroids, …

Mind Perception: Real But Not Artificial Faces Sustain Neural Activity Beyond The N170/Vpp, Thalia Wheatley, Anna Weinberg, Christine Looser, Tim Moran, Greg Hajcak

Dartmouth Scholarship

Faces are visual objects that hold special significance as the icons of other minds. Previous researchers using event-related potentials (ERPs) have found that faces are uniquely associated with an increased N170/vertex positive potential (VPP) and a more sustained frontal positivity. Here, we examined the processing of faces as objects vs. faces as cues to minds by contrasting images of faces possessing minds (human faces), faces lacking minds (doll faces), and non-face objects (i.e., clocks). Although both doll and human faces were associated with an increased N170/VPP from 175–200 ms following stimulus onset, only human faces were associated with a sustained …

Non-Invasive Imaging Of Neuroanatomical Structures And Neural Activation With High-Resolution Mri, Jens Herberholz, Subrata H. Mishra, Divya Uma, Markus W. Germann, Donald H. Edwards, Kimberlee Potter

Neuroscience Institute Faculty Publications

Several years ago, manganese-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MEMRI) was introduced as a new powerful tool to image active brain areas and to identify neural connections in living, non-human animals. Primarily restricted to studies in rodents and later adapted for bird species, MEMRI has recently been discovered as a useful technique for neuroimaging of invertebrate animals. Using crayfish as a model system, we highlight the advantages of MEMRI over conventional techniques for imaging of small nervous systems. MEMRI can be applied to image invertebrate nervous systems at relatively high spatial resolution, and permits identification of stimulus-evoked neural activation non-invasively. Since the …

Common And Distinct Mechanisms Of Cognitive Flexibility In Prefrontal Cortex, Chobok Kim, Nathan F. Johnson, Sara E. Cilles, Brian T. Gold

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

The human ability to flexibly alternate between tasks represents a central component of cognitive control. Neuroimaging studies have linked task switching with a diverse set of prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions, but the contributions of these regions to various forms of cognitive flexibility remain largely unknown. Here, subjects underwent functional brain imaging while they completed a paradigm that selectively induced stimulus, response, or cognitive set switches in the context of a single task decision performed on a common set of stimuli. Behavioral results indicated comparable reaction time costs associated with each switch type. Domain-general task-switching activation was observed in the inferior …

Differential Levels Of Glutamate Dehydrogenase 1 (Glud1) In Balb/C And C57bl/6 Mice And The Effects Of Overexpression Of The Glud1 Gene On Glutamate Release In Striatum, Kevin N. Hascup, Xiaodong Bao, Erin R. Hascup, Dongwei Hui, Wenhao Xu, Francois Pomerleau, Peter Huettl, Mary L. Michaelis, Elias K. Michaelis, Greg A. Gerhardt

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

We have previously shown that overexpression of the Glud1 (glutamate dehydrogenase 1) gene in neurons of C57BL/6 mice results in increased depolarization-induced glutamate release that eventually leads to selective neuronal injury and cell loss by 12 months of age. However, it is known that isogenic lines of Tg (transgenic) mice produced through back-crossing with one strain may differ in their phenotypic characteristics from those produced using another inbred mouse strain. Therefore, we decided to introduce the Glud1 transgene into the Balb/c strain that has endogenously lower levels of GLUD1 (glutamate dehydrogenase 1) enzyme activity in the brain as compared with …

Flexible Dependence Of Functional Responses On Scalar Predictors, Philip T. Reiss, Lei Huang

Philip T. Reiss

No abstract provided.

Association Between Academic Performance And Electrocortical Processing Of Cognitive Stimuli In College Students, Mary Menn Wolf

Theses and Dissertations

Because event-related potentials (ERPs) can reflect individual differences in intellectual ability, individual differences in college grade-point average (GPA) may be associated with specific individual ERP waves, such as the P300. However, P300 amplitude is higher in women than in men and varies across the menstrual cycle, factors that could confound the association between GPA and ERPs. In this regard, our objective was to determine whether differences in GPA are reflected in ERPs while standardling for sex and menstrual phase. After participants provided informed consent, we obtained GPAs from 22 right-handed college students (11 male, age range 22 to 26 and …