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Full-Text Articles in Neuroscience and Neurobiology
Phonophobia Mediates The Relationship Between The Myelinated Vagus And Selective Mutism, Alexandra Sherwood Batzdorf
Phonophobia Mediates The Relationship Between The Myelinated Vagus And Selective Mutism, Alexandra Sherwood Batzdorf
Senior Projects Spring 2016
When active, the myelinated vagus (the tenth cranial nerve) acts as a brake that inhibits sympathetic activity by reducing heart rate and blood pressure, and thus allows for social engagement by redirecting metabolic resources. Among those with selective mutism (SM), a disorder characterized by an inability to speak in certain situations, the vagal brake is dysregulated. One consequence of this is a weakening of the middle-ear acoustic reflex (MEAR), which helps clarify human voices and filters out low-frequency background noise, including the speaker’s own voice. I tested a proposed etiological model of SM and comorbid social anxiety disorder (SAD) by …
Effects Of Early Life Stress On Anhedonia And Striatal Dopamine Concentration Depends On Variation In Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (Comt) Genotype, Sally Lauren Cole
Effects Of Early Life Stress On Anhedonia And Striatal Dopamine Concentration Depends On Variation In Catechol-O-Methyltransferase (Comt) Genotype, Sally Lauren Cole
Senior Projects Spring 2016
Depression is a serious, costly, and heterogeneous disorder for which no one genetic determinant has been identified. Research has shown that stress, and subsequent hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation, is a significant predictor of depression, and one particular stressor that has been linked to vulnerability to depression and HPA axis dysregulation is early life trauma. Due to the heterogeneity and complexity of depression, it is likely that specific gene-environment interactions play a role in the development of depression. Interaction between catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met variants with specific environmental factors can potentially increase vulnerability to depression. The present proposed experiment …