Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

Biological Motion And Gender Recognition: Visual Fixation On The Inversion Effect, Andrey P. Borisyuk, Rachel J. Garland, Alysse M. Feldman, Abigail R. Marchese

Science University Research Symposium (SURS)

Gender recognition of point-light animations replicated an inversion effect. Participants identified the gender of thirty-two (half upright and half inverted, half male and half female) moving point-light human figures. Male figures were more accurately recognized in upright animations whereas female figures were more accurately recognized in inverted animations. Eye gaze of both genders was identical in both the upright animations (predominantly waist and shoulders) and inverted animations (predominantly waist but more distributed across body parts).

Process And Domain Specificity In Regions Engaged For Face Processing: An Fmri Study Of Perceptual Differentiation, Heather R. Collins, Xun Zhu, Ramesh S. Bhatt, Jonathan D. Clark, Jane E. Joseph

Psychology Faculty Publications

The degree to which face-specific brain regions are specialized for different kinds of perceptual processing is debated. This study parametrically varied demands on featural, first-order configural, or second-order configural processing of faces and houses in a perceptual matching task to determine the extent to which the process of perceptual differentiation was selective for faces regardless of processing type (domain-specific account), specialized for specific types of perceptual processing regardless of category (process-specific account), engaged in category-optimized processing (i.e., configural face processing or featural house processing), or reflected generalized perceptual differentiation (i.e., differentiation that crosses category and processing type boundaries). ROIs were …

Cocaine-Induced Reinstatement Of A Conditioned Place Preference In Developing Rats: Involvement Of The D2 Receptor, Kimberly A. Badanich, Cheryl L. Kirstein

Psychology Faculty Publications

Reinstatement of conditioned place preferences have been used to investigate physiological mechanisms mediating drug-seeking behavior in adolescent and adult rodents; however, it is still unclear how psychostimulant exposure during adolescence affects neuron communication and whether these changes would elicit enhanced drug-seeking behavior later in adulthood. The present study determined whether the effects of intra-ventral tegmental area (VTA) or intra-nucleus accumbens septi (NAcc) dopamine (DA) D2 receptor antagonist infusions would block (or potentiate) cocaine-induced reinstatement of conditioned place preferences. Adolescent rats (postnatal day (PND 28–39)) were trained to express a cocaine place preference. The involvement of D2 receptors on cocaine-induced reinstatement …

Chronic Ethanol Exposure Causes Disinhibited Behavior In Drosophila, Estrella Padilla, Kyung-An Han

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Ethanol consumption is frequently associated with disinhibited sexual and locomotor behaviors in humans. Dopamine, a major monoamine found in vertebrates and invertebrates, is implicated in these processes since it regulates motivation, reward, motor control, and sexual behaviors. The goal of this study is to elucidate the role of dopamine in ethanol-associated behavioral disinhibition using the genetically tractable model system Drosophila melanogaster. Previous studies have shown a requirement for normal dopamine neurotransmission for ethanol-induced courtship disinhibition. Furthermore, genetic manipulation of the dopamine system revealed that D1 receptor activity is important for disinhibition and D2 for sensitization. The current study focuses …

Imaging Prior Information In The Brain, Scott Gorlin, Ming Meng, Jitendra Sharma, Hiroki Sugihara

Dartmouth Scholarship

In making sense of the visual world, the brain's processing is driven by two factors: the physical information provided by the eyes (“bottom-up” data) and the expectancies driven by past experience (“top-down” influences). We use degraded stimuli to tease apart the effects of bottom-up and top-down processes because they are easier to recognize with prior knowledge of undegraded images. Using machine learning algorithms, we quantify the amount of information that brain regions contain about stimuli as the subject learns the coherent images. Our results show that several distinct regions, including high-level visual areas and the retinotopic cortex, contain more information …

Navigating The Diverse Dimensions Of Stereotypes, With Domain Specific Deficits: Processes Of Trait Judgments About Individuals With Disabilities, Christina G. Boardman

Scripps Senior Theses

Stereotype groups are interrelated. For example, in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, racial minorities are referred to special education at a much higher rate than are majority racial groups (Tse, Lloyd, Petchkovsky, and Manaia, 2005; Harry, Arnaiz, Klingner, Sturges, 2008). The Stereotype Content Model describes stereotype relationships in terms of an interaction between competence and warmth. Warmth is the more consistent dimension. The nature of competence remains elusive (Fiske, Cuddy, and Glick, 2007; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu, 2002). Knowledge of relationships between stereotype groups, which themselves may be effects of bias, could factor into observed competence effects. …

Increased Modulation By Cognitive Control Region During Fmri Working Memory Task Suggest Inefficiencies In Network Connectivity In Children With Adhd, Ashley Burgess

Honors College Theses

Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder common among children and adolescent populations whose symptoms are believed to be caused by deficits in executive functioning processes such as working memory. Using fMRI analyses, differences in the modulatory influence exhibited by the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) on cortico-striatal regions implicated in working memory (2-back) (Owen et al 2005) was assessed between children with ADHD (twenty-three participants; mean age 6 yrs: 6.4-14.9 yrs) and healthy controls (twenty-six participants; mean age 10.1yrs: 6.3-14.1 yrs). Modulatory influence is defined as the degree to which one region exerts control on another region …

The Effects Of Rectal Temperature And Hydration Status On Perceptual Ratings In Dehydrating Males, Ethan A. Talbot

Honors Scholar Theses

Athletes push the limits of what the human body can handle every day. When they exercise in the heat, they can attain dangerous levels of internal temperature and dehydration. Since athletes are sometimes not aware when they are experiencing severe hyperthermia or hypohydration, it is of interest to anyone who exercises in the heat to study whether athletes are consciously aware that they are approaching dangerous physiological limits. This study compares the perceptual values of athletes exercising in the heat to the changes in their internal temperature and hydration status, to see if athletes can reliably predict their heat and …

Effects Of Cannabidiol On Mk-801-Induced Locomotor Sensitization In Mice, Sara K. Cronin

Scripps Senior Theses

Previous research has shown that cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive compound in the hemp plant Cannabis sativa, may be useful in treating drug craving, one of the hallmarks of drug addiction. However, the neural mechanism by which CBD attenuates craving is poorly understood. Studies from other laboratories have shown that neuroplastic changes associated with brain NMDA glutamate systems may at least partially serve as a neural mechanism for craving. In the current study, the noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist MK-801 maleate was used to induce locomotor sensitization, a form of NMDA glutamate-mediated neuroplasticity, in mice to test the sensitization-attenuating potential of …

The Neurobiology Of Decision-Making And Responsibility: Reconciling Mechanism And Mindedness, Michael N. Shadlen, Adina L. Roskies

Dartmouth Scholarship

This essay reviews recent developments in neurobiology which are beginning to expose the mechanisms that underlie some elements of decision-making that bear on attributions of responsibility. These “elements” have been mainly studied in simple perceptual decision tasks, which are performed similarly by humans and non-human primates. Here we consider the role of neural noise, and suggest that thinking about the role of noise can shift the focus of discussions of randomness in decision-making away from its role in enabling alternate possibilities and toward a potential grounding role for responsibility.

Data Sharing In Neuroimaging Research, Jean-Baptiste Poline, Janis L. Breeze, Satrajit Ghosh, Krzysztof Gorgolewski, Yaroslav O. Halchenko

Dartmouth Scholarship

Significant resources around the world have been invested in neuroimaging studies of brain function and disease. Easier access to this large body of work should have profound impact on research in cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry, leading to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric and neurological disease. A trend toward increased sharing of neuroimaging data has emerged in recent years. Nevertheless, a number of barriers continue to impede momentum. Many researchers and institutions remain uncertain about how to share data or lack the tools and expertise to participate in data sharing. The use of electronic data capture (EDC) methods …

Cosmetic Neurology: Enhancement Of The Mind And Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder Medication Abuse Among College Students, Mary M. Huff

Senior Honors Theses

Cosmetic neurology is becoming increasingly popular, and it is not just sleep deprived, over worked college students who are interested. People are beginning to seek off-label prescriptions for medications that are typically used to treat disorders such as attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) or narcolepsy, while researchers are trying to create drugs used solely for mind enhancement purposes. Along with these drugs come many legal and ethical quandaries relating to the regulation of current use as well as the what ifs of future possibilities. A survey was conducted among college students regarding the diagnosis of ADHD, the abuse of ADHD …

Vestibular And Attractor Network Basis Of The Head Direction Cell Signal In Subcortical Circuits, Benjamin J. Clark, Jeffrey S. Taube

Dartmouth Scholarship

Accurate navigation depends on a network of neural systems that encode the moment-to-moment changes in an animal's directional orientation and location in space. Within this navigation system are head direction (HD) cells, which fire persistently when an animal's head is pointed in a particular direction (Sharp et al., 2001a; Taube, 2007). HD cells are widely thought to underlie an animal's sense of spatial orientation, and research over the last 25+ years has revealed that this robust spatial signal is widely distributed across subcortical and cortical limbic areas. The purpose of the present review is to summarize some of …

Medial Pfc Damage Abolishes The Self-Reference Effect, Carissa Philippi, Melissa Duff, Natalie Denburg, Daniel Tranel, David Rudrauf

Psychology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Pain As Fact And Heuristic: How Pain Neuroimaging Illuminates Moral Dimensions Of Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Faculty Scholarship

Legal statuses, prohibitions, and protections often turn on the presence and degree of physical pain. In legal domains ranging from tort to torture, pain and its degree do important definitional work by delimiting boundaries of lawfulness and of entitlements. The omnipresence of pain in law suggests that the law embodies an intuition about the ontological primacy of pain. Yet, for all the work done by pain as a term in legal texts and practice, it has had a confounding lack of external verifiability. As with other subjective states, we have been able to impute pain’s presence but have not been …

Dementia And Music: Challenges And Future Directions, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Evolution And The Expression Of Biases: Situational Value Changes The Endowment Effect In Chimpanzees, Owen D. Jones, Sarah F. Brosnan, Molly Gardner, Susan P. Lambeth, Steven J. Schapiro

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Cognitive and behavioral biases, which are widespread among humans, have recently been demonstrated in other primates, suggesting a common origin. Here we examine whether the expression of one shared bias, the endowment effect, varies as a function of context. We tested whether objects lacking inherent value elicited a stronger endowment effect (or preference for keeping the object) in a context in which the objects had immediate instrumental value for obtaining valuable resources (food). Chimpanzee subjects had opportunities to trade tools when food was not present, visible but unobtainable, and obtainable using the tools. We found that the endowment effect for …

Feeling At Home: Learning, Law, Cognitive Science, And Narrative, Lea B. Vaughn

Articles

What is the "how and why" of law's affinity for narrative? In order to explain why the use of stories is such an effective teaching and presentation strategy in the law, this paper will consider theories and accounts from cognitive as well as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and, briefly, cultural anthropology. This account seeks to address "how" narrative helps us learn and use the law as well as "why" we are so compelled to use stories in teaching and in practice.

Brain science, simplified here, suggests that the first task is to grab someone's attention. Emotionally charged events are more likely …