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Developmental Neuroscience Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Developmental Neuroscience

Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala Mar 2024

Associations Between Early Childhood Sleep, Memory Function, And Brain Development Across The Nap Transition, Sanna Lokhandwala

Doctoral Dissertations

Preschool-age children often distribute their sleep across a midday nap and overnight sleep. Skipping the nap is suggested to increase the duration and depth of deep sleep (i.e., slow wave activity; SWA). Moreover, missing the midday nap has been shown to impair learning processes. This may be because children’s brains at this point in development are immature, necessitating the intervening nap period to strengthen memories before they are forgotten. Nonetheless, at some point during the preschool years, many children begin transitioning naturally out of napping. It is unclear whether the memory benefits of overnight SWA after a skipped nap depend …


The Role Of Sleep On Inhibitory Control In Young Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Amanda Cremone Nov 2017

The Role Of Sleep On Inhibitory Control In Young Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Amanda Cremone

Doctoral Dissertations

Alongside the hallmark symptoms of hyperactivity and inattention, children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often report having sleep problems. Although sleep deficits are consistently found when evaluated subjectively, impairments in sleep physiology are inconsistent. Compared to typically developing (TD) children, children with ADHD have greater spectral power in the delta (0.5 to 4 Hz) and theta frequency bands (4 to 7 Hz). Moreover, activity in these bands is differentially related to cognitive outcomes in ADHD and TD populations. As such, this dissertation sought to examine relations between sleep physiology and inhibitory control, a primary deficit of ADHD, in young children with …


Behavioral And Neural Mechanisms Of Impulsive Choice, Jesse Mcclure Nov 2015

Behavioral And Neural Mechanisms Of Impulsive Choice, Jesse Mcclure

Doctoral Dissertations

Impulsive choice is defined as the preference for a small immediate reward over a larger delayed reward. Individual variablity in impulsive choice correlates with many socially relevant behaviors. Although forms of impulsive choice have been studied in both behavioral ecology and psychology, the exchange of knowledge between these fields is just beginning. Drawing from both of these fields will improve our research methods allowing for a more detailed understanding of this complex behavior. Existing tasks to measure impulsive choice conflate the delay and quantity of the reward. To address this, I have drawn from foraging research to establish a method …


Estrogen-Sensitive Learning Is Not Affected By Combination Ethinyl Estradiol And Levonorgestrel Oral Contraceptive Use, Darlene F. Ficco Aug 2015

Estrogen-Sensitive Learning Is Not Affected By Combination Ethinyl Estradiol And Levonorgestrel Oral Contraceptive Use, Darlene F. Ficco

Doctoral Dissertations

Two studies were conducted to explore the cognitive effects of combination ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel contraceptive use during late adolescence and young adulthood. Three groups of females, naturally cycling, active pill phase, and hormone-free interval phase, were tested on a battery of estrogen-sensitive, i.e., place learning and word generation, and estrogen-insensitive, i.e., map drawing, mental rotation, digit span, story recall, and object recall, tasks. Study 2 was conducted as a means to replicate the findings observed in Study 1 and to manipulate task difficulty and sensitivity. Two measures of mood were administered, and salivary estradiol levels at time of testing …