Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Micrornas 9a, 9b, 9c And 315 Regulate Expression Of A Reporter For The Neuronal Microtubule-Associated Protein Futsch/Map1b, Leslie M. Rozeboom

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common form of inherited mental retardation in humans. FXS is caused by loss of the Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein (FMRP), an important regulator of neuronal mRNA translation. Patients with FXS display cognitive deficits including memory problems. Protein synthesis-dependent long-term changes in synaptic plasticity are involved in the establishment and maintenance of long-term memory. One prevalent theory of FXS pathology predicts that FMRP is required to negatively regulate the translation of important mRNAs at the synapse. We are investigating microRNAs (miRNAs) as a potential regulator of synaptic FMRP-regulated mRNAs that have previously been …

Nico-Teen: Neural Substrates That Mediate Adolescent Tobacco Abuse., Laura O'Dell

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

Sleep Estimates In Children: Parental Versus Actigraphic Assessments, Ehab A. Dayyat, Karen Spruyt, Dennis L. Molfese, David Gozal

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Background: In the context of increasing awareness about the need for assessment of sleep duration in community and clinical settings, the use of questionnaire-based tools may be fraught with reporter bias. Conversely, actigraphy provides objective assessments of sleep patterns. In this study, we aimed to determine the potential discrepancies between parentally-based sleep logs and concurrent actigraphic recordings in children over a one-week period.

Methods: We studied 327 children aged 3–10 years, and included otherwise healthy, nonsnoring children from the community who were reported by their parents to be nonsnorers and had normal polysomnography, habitually-snoring children from the community …

Minimal Information For Neural Electromagnetic Ontologies (Minemo): A Standards-Compliant Method For Analysis And Integration Of Event-Related Potentials (Erp) Data, Gwen Frishkoff, Jason Sydes, Kurt Mueller, Tim Curran, John F. Connolly, Kerry Kilborn, Dennis L. Molfese, Charles Perfetti, Allen D. Malony

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

We present MINEMO (Minimal Information for Neural ElectroMagnetic Ontologies), a checklist for the description of event-related potentials (ERP) studies. MINEMO extends MINI (Minimal Information for Neuroscience Investigations)to the ERP domain. Checklist terms are explicated in NEMO, a formal ontology that is designed to support ERP data sharing and integration. MINEMO is also linked to an ERP database and web application (the NEMO portal). Users upload their data and enter MINEMO information through the portal. The database then stores these entries in RDF (Resource Description Framework), along with summary metrics, i.e., spatial and temporal metadata. Together these spatial, temporal, and functional …

Acute Synaptic Activity Causes Differential Mirna Expression In The Drosophila Melanogaster Larval Central Nervous System, Robert Ian Sand

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The primary goal of this thesis was to determine if spaced synaptic stimulation induced the differential expression of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the Drosophila melanogaster central nervous system (CNS). Prior to attaining this goal, we needed to identify and validate a spaced stimulation paradigm that could induce the formation of new synaptic growth at a model synapse, the larval neuromuscular junction (NMJ). Both Channelrhodopsin- and high potassium-based stimulation paradigms adapted from (Ataman, et al. 2008) were tested. Once validation of these paradigms was complete, we sought to characterize the miRNA expression profile of the larval CNS by miRNA array. Following attainment …

Nico-Teen: Neural Substrates That Mediate Adolescent Tobacco Abuse., Laura O'Dell

Departmental Papers (Psych)

No abstract provided.

Molecular Expression Of Neuroprotective And Neurodestructive Signaling Systems Following Axotomy-Induced Target Disconnection: Relevance To Als, Melissa Marie Haulcomb

Dissertations

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is the most common adult motoneuron (MN) degenerative disease. Discovery of a portion of familial cases with a mutation in the gene superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) gene led to the development of a transgenic mouse model. Pre-symptomatic SOD1 mice show no symptoms well into adulthood, however once symptom onset has occurred they display pathological hallmarks of ALS. The initial pathological event is loss of neuromuscular junctions in the lower limbs and therefore the die-back theory of ALS, suggests disconnection from the target musculature leads to MN degeneration. Our lab utilizes a peripheral nerve injury model to …

Neuroendocrine Consequences Of Binge Alcohol Exposure During Peri-Puberty On Functioning Of The Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Adrenal (Hpa) Axis, Magdalena Malgorzata Przybycien-Szymanska

Dissertations

Binge alcohol (EtOH) exposure in adolescence is a fundamental health concern. In 2005, over 20% of teenagers between ages 15 and 17 reported binge drinking behavior within a one month period preceding the survey (Dept. of Health and Human Services: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration). Binge drinking is defined as consuming enough alcohol within a 2.0 h period to bring blood alcohol concentration above 0.08%. In the adolescent population, this type of alcohol exposure tends to be repeated. In adults, alcohol abuse has been correlated with increased incidence of mood disorders and these disorders are characterized by dysregulation …

The Role Of Sdf1/Cxcr4 Signaling In Opioid-Induced Hypernociception, Natalie Wilson

Dissertations

Opioids currently represent the best treatment option for severe and chronic pain conditions. Opioids while effective at controlling pain states also come with a number of side effects such as respiratory depression, urinary retention, dependence, tolerance, and opioid-induced hypernociception (OIH). OIH is a phenomenon in which opioids induce pain and this pain is often experienced at a site separate from the site of injury. Much research has been conducted investigating the mechanism of OIH, but the mechanism remains unsolved. One potential mechanism that has yet to be adequately explored is chemokines. Chemokines role in OIH is warranted given recent studies …

On The Origin Of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, And Fiction, Hope Hollocher, Agustín Fuentes, Charles H. Pence, Grant Ramsey, Daniel John Sportiello, Michelle M. Wirth

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gender Differences In The Processing Of Acute And Repeated Stress, Jaidee Zavala

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Chronic stress is implicated in the pathogenesis of a variety of diseases, including affective, immune and cardiovascular disorders, which are differentially experienced by men and women. Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), arginine vasopressin (AVP), and glucocorticoid receptor (GR) are the major regulators of the stress response and are widely expressed in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVH), where adaptive responses to stress are generated. Adult male and female rats were subjected to single (acute) or 14 consecutive daily (repeated) 30 min restraint sessions, or maintained as unstressed controls. Rats were perfused after their final restraint, and their brain tissues sectioned and …

The Role Of Dopamine In Operant Learning And Memory, Jennifer Leigh Johnson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that regulates many physiological processes including reward, motivation, movement, learning and memory, and reinforcement. The cognitive processes in which one associates a specific action or behavior with a positive or negative consequence is referred to as operant learning, and is a robust occurrence in everyday life. It is also believed to play a significant role in the development of drug addiction and has been shown that increased levels of dopamine are associated with the intake of addictive drugs such as cocaine and alcohol; however, the underlying cellular mechanisms of this learned behavior are not well understood. …

Sirt1 Modulates Aggregation And Toxicity Through Deacetylation Of The Androgen Receptor In Cell Models Of Sbma, Heather L. Montie, Richard G. Pestell, Diane E. Merry

PCOM Scholarly Works

Posttranslational protein modifications can play a major role in disease pathogenesis; phosphorylation, sumoylation, and acetylation modulate the toxicity of a variety of proteotoxic proteins. The androgen receptor (AR) is substantially modified, in response to hormone binding, by phosphorylation, sumoylation, and acetylation; these modifications might thus contribute to DHT-dependent polyglutamine (polyQ)-expanded AR proteotoxicity in spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA). SIRT1, a nuclear protein and deacetylase of the AR, is neuroprotective in many neurodegenerative disease models. Our studies reveal that SIRT1 also offers protection against polyQexpanded AR by deacetylating the AR at lysines 630/632/633. This finding suggested that nuclear AR acetylation …

Cortical-Spinal Interactions In Skill Acquisition And Performance And Their Implications For Rehabilitation, Chadwick Bruno Jean Boulay

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Many people in the United States have motor impairments due to stroke or other central nervous system (CNS) traumas. Motor impairments also burden the U.S. economy and health care system. Current rehabilitative therapies are moderately effective but can be improved upon. Improvements to rehabilitation protocols are informed by increased understanding of the CNS including understanding interactions between different structures in the CNS and understanding CNS plasticity in response to trauma or skill acquisition.

The Formation And Distribution Of Hippocampal Synapses On Patterned Neuronal Networks, Natalie Michelle Dowell-Mesfin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

ABSTRACT

Calcium Regulation And Transmitter Release At Drosophila Larval Neuromuscular Junction, Tao He

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Calcium ions act as the most versatile 2nd messenger and are involved in an incredibly broad spectrum of biological processes. Proper cellular Ca2+ homeostasis is paramount in maintaining normal cell growth, functions, survival and programmed death. Hence, understanding Ca2+ regulation has been a goal of and a hot topic in cutting-edge biological research for decades. Recently, the advent of a new generation of Ca2+ indicators has made a major contribution to advances in understanding Ca2+ regulation (Grynkiewicz et al., 1985). Likewise, the application of Drosophila melanogaster as an animal model has provided tantalizing clues and fueled the progress of research …

The Role Of Androstane Neurosteroids In Alcohol-Mediated Social Behavior, Jason J. Paris

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Androgenic steroids, such as testosterone, may influence the propensity for aggression in both people and animals. Some of testosterone's effects on aggression may be due, in part, to its metabolic products that are 5á-reduced and 3á-hydroxylated to form, 3á-androstanediol (3á-diol), which can also enhance aggression in mice. Notably, alcohol (EtOH) consumption facilitates aggression in people and animals, particularly among those predisposed to act aggressively. In rats, EtOH can increase 3á-diol in prefrontal cortex, which may facilitate aggression. The present work aimed to elucidate the role of 3á-diol for EtOH-enhanced aggression. We hypothesized that EtOH would enhance inter-male aggression, social dominance, …

A Functional Study Of Ampa And Kainate Receptors, Yan Han

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The ionotropic glutamate receptors are localized in the pre- and postsynaptic membrane of neurons and mediate the majority of fast excitatory synaptic transmission. These receptors are divided into three subtypes: α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA), kainic acid, and N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors. My thesis work focused on AMPA and kainate receptor subtypes.

Physiology Of Yawning : Proximate Mechanisms Supporting An Ultimate Function, Melanie Lee Shoup-Knox

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Recent research suggests that yawning functions to cool the brain during periods of mild hyperthermia. Evidence for this hypothesis is largely behavioral, and includes reports of increased yawning during increases in ambient temperature and times of stress as well as an amelioration of yawning upon nasal breathing and forehead cooling. Little research has been published on the physiological mechanisms supporting a brain cooling function, however. The current set of studies explores human and animal physiological parameters in search of evidence of brain cooling during yawning. In humans, heart rate, skin temperature, and skin conductance findings suggest that yawning involves an …

Neural Spike Renormalization. Part I — Universal Number 1, Bo Deng

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

For a class of circuit models for neurons, it has been shown that the transmembrane electrical potentials in spike bursts have an inverse correlation with the intra-cellular energy conversion: the fewer spikes per burst the more energetic each spike is. Here we demonstrate that as the per-spike energy goes down to zero, a universal constant to the bifurcation of spike-bursts emerges in a similar way as Feigenbaum’s constant does to the period-doubling bifurcation to chaos generation, and the new universal constant is the first natural number 1.

Sex Bias In Neuroscience And Biomedical Research, Annaliese K. Beery, Irving Zucker

Neuroscience: Faculty Publications

Female mammals have long been neglected in biomedical research. The NIH mandated enrollment of women in human clinical trials in 1993, but no similar initiatives exist to foster research on female animals. We reviewed sex bias in research on mammals in 10 biological fields for 2009 and their historical precedents. Male bias was evident in 8 disciplines and most prominent in neuroscience, with single-sex studies of male animals outnumbering those of females 5.5 to 1. In the past half-century, male bias in non-human studies has increased while declining in human studies. Studies of both sexes frequently fail to analyze results …

Lipopolysaccharide Animal Models For Parkinson's Disease, Mei Liu, Guoying Bing

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin from Gram-negative bacteria, acts as a potent stimulator of microglia and has been used to study the inflammatory process in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD) and anti-inflammatory therapy for PD treatment. Here, we review the growing body of literature on both in vitro and in vivo LPS PD models. Primary cell cultures from mesencephalic tissue were exposed to LPS in vitro; LPS was stereotaxically injected into the substantia nigra, striatum, or globus pallidus of brain or injected into the peritoneal cavity of the animal in vivo. In conclusion, the LPS PD models are summarized as …

The Persistence Of Musical Memories: A Descriptive Study Of Earworms, Andrea R. Halpern, James C. Bartlett

Faculty Journal Articles

We describe some characteristics of persistent musical and verbal retrieval episodes, commonly known as "earworms." In Study 1, participants first filled out a survey summarizing their earworm experiences retrospectively. This was followed by a diary study to document each experience as it happened. Study 2 was an extension of the diary study with a larger sample and a focus on triggering events. Consistent with popular belief, these persistent musical memories were common across people and occurred frequently for most respondents, and were often linked to recent exposure to preferred music. Contrary to popular belief, the large majority of such experiences …

Contextual Information And Memory For Unfamiliar Tunes In Older And Younger Adults, Samantha A. Deffler, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

We examined age differences in the effectiveness of multiple repetitions and providing associative facts on tune memory. For both tune and fact recognition, three presentations were beneficial. Age was irrelevant in fact recognition, but older adults were less successful than younger in tune recognition. The associative fact did not affect young adults' performance. Among older people, the neutral association harmed performance; the emotional fact mitigated performance back to baseline. Young adults seemed to rely solely on procedural memory, or repetition, to learn tunes. Older adults benefitted by using emotional associative information to counteract memory burdens imposed by neutral associative information.

Pavlovian Conditioning Between Cocaine Stimulant Effects And A Discrete Sensory Cue: Implementation Of An Alternating Conditioning Procedure, Jonathan Miller Wachtel

Honors Papers

Cocaine addiction is associated with an extremely high rate of relapse, the resumption of drug taking behavior following a period of abstinence. Relapse may be induced by exposure to drug-associated cues, stress, or drug challenge. Rodent models of addiction investigate reinstatement, the resumption of drug-seeking behavior following a period of abstinence. This study investigated the necessary procedures for establishing Pavlovian conditioning between a discrete sensory cue and cocaine stimulant effects (15.0 mg/kg, IP). Successful conditioning was indicated by cue induced conditioned hyperactivity. In Experiment 1, a simple discrete visual cue failed to be attributed salience. Cocaine-treated rats showed heightened locomotor …

Circadian And Homeostatic Regulation Of Sleep In Cast/Eij And C57bl/6j Mice, Peng Jiang

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Sleep is essential for mammals and possibly for all animals. Advancing our knowledge of sleep regulation is crucial for the development of interventions in sleep-related health and social problems. With this aim, this study utilizes laboratory mice to explore sleep regulatory mechanisms at behavioral, molecular, and genetic levels.

Sleep is regulated by the interaction of circadian and homeostatic processes. The circadian clock facilitates sleep to occur at a favorable time of the day. Normal mice, such as the C57BL/6J (B6) strain, sleep mostly during the day and initiate activities at dark onset. Here, I show mice of the CAST/EiJ (CAST) …

Free Radical Stress-Induced Parkinsonian Lewy-Like Aggregation Prevented Through Polyphenolic Phytochemical Analog Intervention: Implications For Subcellular Trafficking And Neurodegenerative Disorders, Rituraj Pal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), the chief endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-resident oxidoreductase chaperone, is known to catalyze the maturation of disulfide-bond-containing proteins primarily through oxidation-reduction and isomerization functions. The rate-determining step in the oxidative regeneration path of disulfide-bond-containing proteins generally couples chemical thiol-disulfide-exchange reactions to a physical conformational folding reaction. I have determined the impact of PDI and its subdomains on the rate-determining step in ribonuclease A folding and on the physical structure-forming step of select ER-processed proteins including RNase A. This was facilitated through application of a novel chemical tool to exclusively populate native-disulfide-containing intermediates in unstructured forms. The described biochemical …

Psychiatric Disorders As Potential Predictors In Medical Disease Development, Linda Kay Taliaferro

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Millions of individuals suffer disability or death from immune-based inflammatory diseases. If psychiatric disorders could be empirically linked to the prediction of immune-based inflammatory diseases, there would be a basis for promoting disease prevention measures for individuals diagnosed with one of four psychiatric disorders. Psychoneuroimmunology provided the theoretical base for understanding emotionally induced medical disease development. In this quantitative study, a parallel archival research design was used to investigate the degree to which generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, major depression recurrent, and dysthymic disorder predicted the presence of atherosclerosis, cardiovascular heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and type II diabetes. …

The Influence Of Schwartz's Values On Teachers' Internet Usage: A Quantitative Study Of Cross Cultural Differences Between European Nations, Meghana Aleti

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study investigated the Impact of human values on teacher Internet usage at individual levels across various nations. Schwartz's higher order values: Openness to Change, Conservation, Self-Enhancement, and Self-Transcendence are used as value variables. Teachers' are categorized as primary education, secondary education or college level. College teachers showed heavy Internet use when compared to secondary and primary teachers. Conservation higher order value was most significant among college teachers. Openness to Change and Self-Enhancement values are positively correlated with heavy Internet use among various nations. This study should be of interest to education and policy makers interested in comparison of Internet …

Environmental Enrichment-Mediated Neuroprotection Against Traumatic Brain Injury:Role Of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Kyle Leann Traver

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Each year there are over 1.7 million traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in the United States causing long-term health deficits and significant medical costs. This growing epidemic has led researchers to find methods for treating and preventing these injuries. Environmental Enrichment (EE) is an innovative technique shown to improve cognitive and functional outcomes following a TBI; however, the beneficial effects before injury have not been established. Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) has been determined as a neuroprotective biomolecule in TBI. This research examined these two protective components and their roles in TBI. It was hypothesized that BDNF mRNA and protein levels would …