Biology Commons^™

Community-Derived Core Concepts For Neuroscience Higher Education, Audrey Chen, Kimberley A. Phillips, Jennifer E. Schaefer, Patrick M. Sonner

Biology Faculty Publications

Core concepts provide a framework for organizing facts and understanding in neuroscience higher education curricula. Core concepts are overarching principles that identify patterns in neuroscience processes and phenomena and can be used as a foundational scaffold for neuroscience knowledge. The need for community-derived core concepts is pressing, because both the pace of research and number of neuroscience programs are rapidly expanding. While general biology and many subdisciplines within biology have identified core concepts, neuroscience has yet to establish a community-derived set of core concepts for neuroscience higher education. We used an empirical approach involving more than 100 neuroscience educators to …

Jen Schaefer’S 2021 Induction Ceremony Address: "Astrocytes, Allostasis And The Liberal Arts", Jennifer Schaefer

Phi Beta Kappa Lectures

This is the 12th cohort of students who have been inducted into the chapter, which now counts just under 800 members.

Jennifer Schaefer, associate professor of biology and the department chair at CSB/SJU who received Phi Beta Kappa recognition while attending St. Olaf College as an undergraduate student, speaks on “Astrocytes, Allostasis and the Liberal Arts” about the importance of the liberal arts for scientific advancement and in students’ lives as they leave CSB/SJU.

The group includes 42 seniors and 11 juniors, and they represent five countries and 11 states. Those selected are Phi Beta Kappa members for life, and …

Development Of A System For Analysis Of Muscle Contraction Pattern During Drosophila Melanogaster Crawling Behavior, Mary Catherine Decker

Celebrating Scholarship & Creativity Day (2011-2017)

The aim of this study was to attain footage of the crawling Drosophila larva from 360° angles in order to visualize the pattern of individual muscle contractions. A GAL4-UAS system was used to drive homozygous GCAMP expression, causing the muscles of the Drosophila larva to fluoresce when contracting. A stand was designed in order to place a live, crawling larva in a glass capillary tube under a fluorescent microscope and then rotate the tube completely for 360° video footage. Through the combination of the GCAMP expression and the rotatable stand, video of the individual muscle contraction pattern of a crawling …

The Control Of Crawling Movement By Interneuron Circuits Of The Drosophila Larva, Mary Sweet

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

The organization of the human brain is extremely complex. Therefore, scientists have relied upon model organisms like the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster for nervous system studies, because these organisms are less complex and can be experimentally manipulated with genetic tools. In this study, we focus on fruit fly larval crawling behavior and how it can be altered by the manipulation of subsets of neurons that may be involved in generating crawling behavior. Eight subsets were tested and all of them were found to limit normal larval crawling behavior to some degree. The elucidation of these subsets will help us to …

Schizophrenia: An Integrative Study Of Biological Liabilities And Neurological Causes, Daniel J. Knoblach

Honors Theses, 1963-2015

Society has become increasingly aware of the frustrating and confusing disorders that can result when the brain loses control of its intricate mechanisms. One such disorder that continues to baffle experts is schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a serious thought disorder characterized by a broad spectrum of cognitive and emotional dysfunctions that disrupts a person's perception of the world into one of tormenting psychotic experience. Schizophrenia results from a variety of complex causes with each possibly contributing something to the disorder. A multifactorial threshold model explains causation by demonstrating that a sum of biological liabilities (genetics and prenatal developmental problems) may take …