Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

Effect Of Neuroinflammation On Exploratory Behavior In Mice, Gage Pompa, Ariana Mitic, Yader Gomez, Lilian Hagos, Orlando Montiel

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Introduction: Mice have been observed in both laboratory and field settings to exhibit a tendency to remain near corners and walls. This trait is known as positive thigmotaxis. Thigmotaxis has been recognized as a fundamental aspect of rodent behavior and used extensively as an anxiety index in mice. Although this characteristic has been recognized as a fundamental aspect of rodent behavior, thigmotaxis has been extensively studied in rectangular and circular environments. However, there is a notable lack of understanding of how alternative geometric configurations can influence this behavior.

Methods and Approach: Using a grid overlaid on the environment the mice …

The Effects Of Divides Attention On Long-Term Memory For Natualistic Stimuli, Gaia Steinberg, Jackson S. Pelzner, Rhiannon N. Soriano Smith, Colleen M. Parks

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

The ability to identify previously experienced events is a fundamental aspect of memory. This study investigates recognition memory using naturalistic stimuli, specifically news headlines, to explore both controlled (recollection) and automatic (familiarity) memory processes. Most recognition memory experiments rely on simplistic stimuli like words or pictures, but we aim to extend these theories by using more complex, naturalistic materials (news headlines). Participants completed recognition tasks with both headlines and pictures to establish baseline differences between these stimuli types. The order of presentation between stimulus types was randomized between pictures or headlines first. They were assigned to either full or divided …

Glial-Specific Genes Are Strongly Associated With Alzheimer's Disease By Gene-Based Polygenic Risk Score Analysis, Jennifer Zheng, Faria Tavacoli, Tyrell Pratt, Alice Lee, Tingwei Liu, Jingchun Chen

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Methods: Gene-based PRSs were constructed in AD cases and controls within each gene of the glial cells, according to the GWAS summary statistics of European ancestry. In detail, gene-based PRSs were first calculated for each glial cell type-specific gene for AD cases and controls in the discovery dataset (ADc1234ADA) using PRSet software. A meta-analysis with a fixed model was performed when the signal in both datasets was in the same direction. Bonferroni corrections for multiple testing (at α = .05) were used to determine significance within each of the three glial groups. Forest plots were used to visualize the results …

Evaluating Human Plasma Biomakers For Alzheimer's Disease; Phosphorylated-Tau 217, Phosphorylated-Tau 181, And Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein, Mason Jonah, Mayarae N. Mugosa, Bella Hou, Emma-Nikole Krilchev, Zhengshi Yang, Dietmar Cordes, Aaron Ritter, Jefferson W. Kinney

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is primarily identifiable by amyloid-beta (Aβ) neuronal plaques, neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) that form as aggregates of hyperphosphorylated tau (ptau) proteins clump together, and the presence of neuroinflammation; all of which are otherwise known as the hallmarks of AD pathology. Recent emerging research has discovered striking similarities between AD and diabetes mellitus pathology, illustrating how insulin deficiency and insulin resistance–both of which result in the chronic hyperglycemic state seen in the diabetic–are involved in an increase in the phosphorylation of tau. This leads to and intensifies the formation of intracellular NFTs serving …

Exploring Modality Differences In Recognition Memory: Repetition Effects On Recollection And Familiarity, Ivanesa Velikova, Kevin Mohawk, Colleen Parks

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Research has shown that memory for visual objects tends to be superior compared to memory for auditory objects. The present study aimed to investigate the underlying mechanisms of why recognition memory tends to be better for visual information. Recognition memory relies on two processes, recollection and familiarity. Recollection involves retrieving contextual details of a memory while familiarity is simply a feeling that something has been encountered before. We investigated recollection and familiarity in the two modalities by having participants lean a list of auditory objects (e.g., dog barking) and visual objects (e.g., picture of a lion) under full attention (FA) …

The Effect Of Encoding Strategies On Recognition Memory, Camila Schettini, Cole Kaneshiro, Kevin Mohawk, Colleen Parks

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Successful memory decisions require distinguishing between true and false memories. VariouS strategies can be used to avoid false memories such as the Recall-To-Reject (R-R) strategy and the Distinctiveness Heuristic (DH). R-R involves rejecting false information by recalling correct information (I know this person is not Bob, because Bob has brown hair); while DH involves the rejection of false information due to failure to recollect expected information (I know I never met this person because I would remember if I had). The purpose of this study is to examine how these strategies affect recognition memory. In the present study participants were …

Comparing Forgetting Rates Between Item And Relational Memories, Lex De Asis, Rhiannon N. Soriano Smith, Colleen M. Parks

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Forgetting is an everyday occurrence where an idea that could be recalled successfully is no longer able to be retrieved (Tulving, 1974). Multiple theories suggest how forgetting occurs, such as the decay theory, which suggests that memories are gradually forgotten over time, and the interference theory, in which forgetting occurs because of competing information. Additionally, there are two newer theories which both predict that item representations should be forgotten because of interference and mnemonic discrimination should be forgotten due to decay: the memory system-dependent forgetting hypothesis (Hardt, Nader, & Nadel, 2013), and the representation theory of forgetting (Sadeh et al., …

Examining Emotion And Ease Of Recall For Life Story Memories In Young Adults, Roxanna E. Chavez, Erin L. Murphy, David E. Copeland

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Life stories are narratives that use autobiographical memories to shape personal identity. This study investigated how emotional valence and ease of recall may change over time. Participants were asked to recall ten life story memories in two interviews held three weeks apart. Participants provided ratings of emotional valence and ease of recall for each memory. A significant difference was found in emotional valence between Session 1 (M = 3.159, SD = .772) and Session 2 (M = 2.905, SD = .788), t(68) = 2.734, p < .01, with Session 1 memories rated as significantly more negative (M = 1.812, SD = 1.427) than those in Session 2 (M = 1.275, SD = 1.316), t(68) = 3.232, p < .01. Furthermore, negative memories were more frequent in the last five Session 1 memories (M = 0.986, SD = 0.866) than in all of Session 2 memories (First Five: M = 0.652, SD = .783; Last Five: M = 0.623, SD = .892), F(3, 204) = 3.663, p < .05. For ease of recall, the first five memories in both sessions (Session 1: M = 5.684, SD = 0.806; Session 2: M = 5.612, SD = 0.963) were significantly easier to recall than the last five in both sessions (Session 1: M = .214, SD = 1.128; Session 2: M = 5.136, SD = 1.080), F(2.498, 169.864) = 7.369, p < .001. Overall, these findings suggest participants recalled more accessible memories first, with negative memories being harder to retrieve as sessions progressed.

Investigating The Impact Of Psychological Interventions On Autoimmune Disease Progression In Women, Nicole Datastanyan

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Autoimmune disease arises when an individual's immune system mistakenly attacks and damages the body’s tissues. Autoimmune disease disproportionately affects women, with eighty percent of diagnosed patients being female. This research proposal aims to explore the relationship between psychological factors (e.g., stress, anxiety, depression) and the progression of autoimmune diseases. This poster will propose a detailed study to assess whether reducing psychological distress through cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can slow disease progression. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a form of talk therapy to relieve symptoms of mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, stress, or grief. Two hundred female patients diagnosed with …

Pathway-Based Polygenic Risk Score Analysis Of Brain Glial Indicates Cell-Type-Specific Roles In Alzheimer's Disease, Tyrell Pratt, Alice Lee, Jennifer Zheng, Faria Tavacoli, Hayley Ho, Tingwei Liu, Jingchun Chen

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive cognitive decline and extensive brain pathology, including amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuroinflammation. This study aims to identify any glial cell type-specific pathways associated with AD.

Methods: We first investigated the correlation between AD and the genetic risk of glia-specific pathways using pathway-based polygenic risk score (PRS) with PRSet software in the discovery data (ADc1234ADA) adjusted by the top two principal components (PC1, PC2) (Model 1), followed by additional adjustment with sex, age, and APOE ε4 count in Model 2. Further PRSet analyses were replicated in independent data …

Inter-Rater Reliablility Of Sharp Wave Ripple Detection In Recently Trained Experts, Orlando Montiel, Gage Pompa, Yader Gomez, Talha Soluoko

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Sharp wave ripples (SWR) are a brain phenomenon that originate in the hippocampus, a region crucial for memory and learning. These events occur during periods of rest or slow-wave sleep and are characterized by fast oscillatory bursts (150-250Hz) and are thought to be important for the brain to consolidate memory. SWR are believed to facilitate the transfer of information from the hippocampus to the cortex, strengthening synaptic connections & enabling long-term memory storage. Accurate detection & assessment of SWRs is essential for advancing how the brain processes and stores information.

This study examines the accuracy/consistency of SWR image selection and …

Association Between Polygenic Scores For Brain Structure And Alzheimer's Disease, Eunjae Lee, Faria Tavacoli, Tingwei Liu, Brittany Diaz Ruiz, Hayley Ho, Alice Lee, Jingchun Chen

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative condition and the most common type of dementia. Research has shown that volumetric changes in subcortical brain structures, which make up roughly 25% of the brain's total volume and affect many physiological functions. This research project aims to investigate the genetic association between brain structures and AD. GWAS data of eight different brain structures (ICV, accumbens, amygdala, caudate, hippocampus, pallidum, putamen, and thalamus) were used to create polygenic scores (PGSs) in a discovery (cases/controls = 2,651/2,768) and replication dataset (cases/controls = 553/644). We utilized PRSice-2 software to generate PGSs and assess genetic correlations …

Can Reconsolidation Account For The Misinformation Effect?, Olesya T. Frolova, Gabriel E. Hull

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

A successful replication of Rindal & Zaragoza (2016) would indicate that reconsolidation cannot account for the misinformation effect. Current preliminary data supports the results found by the original study, suggesting that an alternative theory must be explored to explain the misinformation effect. For example, it is possible that the original memory is not altered by the misinformation but competes with the original memory leading to temporary inaccessibility at test. Results from this study could influence law enforcement interview techniques to avoid false testimonies. One limitation of the study is that performance on the test was potentially too good; this will …

Investigating The Impact Of Dividing Attention On Auditory And Visual Object Memory, Sharica Lee, Alexa Salomon, Laura L.S. Werner, Kevin D. Mohawk, Maggie Mcmullin

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Recently, we found that dividing attention reduced recollection and familiarity for visual objects, but a different pattern emerged for auditory object memory: auditory object recollection was not affected by dividing attention. This could be attributable to differing levels of baseline performance with visual memory far exceeding auditory memory. Thus, we attempted to equate baseline performance in both modalities in order to adequately investigate the previous findings.

Musicality, Misophonia Sensitivity, And Responsiveness To Misophonia Videos, Alexis Rice, Jennifer Hsu, Kaela Omengan, Sivan Barashy

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Misophonia sensitivity as measured by the A-MISO-S predicts emotional responses to misophonia trigger videos, but musical sophistication (Gold MSI scores) did not. A measure of real-time responses to videos can capture a meaningful aspect of misophonic experience in the general population. Future research should investigate whether more direct measures of musicality such as perceptual tasks will show a relationship between musicality and misophonic reactions.

The Stability Of The Speech-To-Song Illusion, Jennifer Hsu, Brooke Booth, Jordyn Karns, Rodica R. Constantine

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

The Speech-to-Song (STS) illusion: when a listener is presented with multiple repetitions of a spoken phrase and begins to hear it as increasingly song-like. In the present study, we aim to verify anecdotal evidence that suggests the STS illusion is temporally stable and replicate existing evidence that excerpts transform to song by the third or fourth repetition and perhaps faster upon future encounters.

Recognition Memory For Auditory And Visual Objects, Sharica Lee, Alexa Salomon, Kevin Mohawk, Laura Werner

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Visual object memory is superior to auditory object memory. Our past research showed that auditory memory was less sensitive to divide attention during study, which may be attributable to representational differences between auditory memory and visual memory.

In the present study, we attempted to equate auditory and visual memory representations in order to adequately investigate the impact of dividing attention on recognition memory.

Recognition memory is thought to rely on two distinct processes, recollection and familiarity. Recollection involves the retrieval of precise qualitative detail and is the most sensitive to dividing attention.

Infants' Intermodal Knowledge Of Gender Using Faces And Voices, Bijoux Cheun, Christina Saliba, Alexis Rice, Marian Espina

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Infants begin to use intermodal knowledge to match male and female faces to the corresponding voice, in their first year of life.

Infants have more experience with female faces which should lead to greater intermodal knowledge of female faces.

Previous studies have found inconsistent results. This could be due to the type of stimuli used.

This study uses several pairs of static and dynamic faces to investigate how methodological differences may impact infants' performance.

Forgetting In Item Recognition And Pattern Separation, Mateo Marquez, Rhiannon Soriano Smith

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Forgetting is commonly defined as the inability to access information that was once successfully encoded and could be retrieved with a cue, but now leads to memory failure (Frankland et al. 2013).

Memory representations based in the hippocampus engage in pattern separation and are more prone to decay than interference (Sadeh & Pertrzov, 2020).

Extra-hippocampal representations are more prone to interference than decay (Hardt et al. 2013).

Pattern Separation refers to keeping memory representations distinct from one another.

Is there more decay in pattern separation and more interference in item recognition?

The Influence Of Unitization On Recognition Memory, Ting Tong, Amaya D. Bolling-Mcdevitt Hernandez, Audrey Kirsch, Alanna N. Osmanski

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Previous research on recognition memory assumes that associative recognition relies on recollection, whereas item recognition relies on a combination of recollection and familiarity. Unitization refers to the encoding strategy where two separate items are perceived as a single coherent entity or object. Research has demonstrated that unitization can facilitate familiarity-based recognition by generating representations of the stimulus and integrating it into a unified whole. To investigate this issue, we examined the effect of unitization on memory for word-pairs through two types of tests:

Associative Recognition: judge whether word pairs occurred together

Item Recognition: judge whether single words are old or …