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Full-Text Articles in Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Transferring Organelles Into Native Neurons: A Disease-Modifying Therapy For Neurodegenerative Disorders, Lohiny Balendran Mar 2023

Transferring Organelles Into Native Neurons: A Disease-Modifying Therapy For Neurodegenerative Disorders, Lohiny Balendran

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Currently, there are no disease-modifying therapies to counter the progression of neurodegenerative diseases that are associated with mitochondrial dysfunction in the early stages. In this study, we have used a novel strategy of cell fusion to transfer mitochondria from one cell to another using fusogens (syncytin 1 and syncytin 2). Syncytins are placental proteins encoded by endogenous retroviral envelope genes that promote cellular fusion. In this study, we have proposed that donor cells engineered to stably express syncytin when cocultured with recipient cells will allow fusion and facilitate the transfer of mitochondria into recipient cells. Syncytin-mediated systems revealed about 16.6-18.5% …


The Sensory Properties Of The Fast Visuomotor System, Rebecca Kozak Jan 2023

The Sensory Properties Of The Fast Visuomotor System, Rebecca Kozak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The brain has a remarkable capacity to rapidly transform vision into action, which allows us to initiate reaches towards targets within fractions of a second. Despite being fundamental to our interaction with a dynamic environment, these fast visuomotor transformations and their underlying neural substrates are poorly understood. This gap in the literature is further exacerbated by the unreliable presence of rapid visuomotor responses on the upper limb, likely due to the use of less optimal stimuli and paradigms. My thesis explores the stimulus properties which best evoke short latency reaction times and electromyographic responses during visually guided reaching, their application …


Perceptual Benefits From Long-Term Exposure To Naturalistic Sound Patterns, Bruno A. Mesquita Jan 2023

Perceptual Benefits From Long-Term Exposure To Naturalistic Sound Patterns, Bruno A. Mesquita

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Our brains are proficient in learning recurring structures in the environment, in order to optimize perceptual inferences based on relevant information in a stochastic input. Sensory information is multi-dimensional, and the relationship between sound dimensions may be, in itself, a source of information. Many sounds in our environment covary dynamically, and these covariances may be learned, and therefore shape our perception, through exposure to them in our natural environment. In the present study we investigate how natural (long term), and experimental (short term), learning of statistical regularities in sounds may shape our ability to categorize them (Experiment 1) and to …