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Full-Text Articles in Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Targeting Pro-Inflammatory Function Of Microglia Using Small Molecules To Combat Neurodegeneration, Gabrielle C. Williams, Priya Prakash, Gaurav Chopra Aug 2018

Targeting Pro-Inflammatory Function Of Microglia Using Small Molecules To Combat Neurodegeneration, Gabrielle C. Williams, Priya Prakash, Gaurav Chopra

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Microglia are the brain’s resident immune cells that are responsible for maintaining homeostasis in healthy conditions. During injury or infection, resting microglia get activated and produce pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1b, IL-1a, IL-6, etc. along with reactive oxygen species like nitric oxide (NO) to combat neuroinflammatory diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Inflammation is characterized by the activation of resident-immune cells in the brain called microglia that respond to the eat-me signals released by the toxic amyloid beta peptides as well as the dying neurons in the microenvironment. Recent studies have shown that activated microglia induce neuronal death by secreting …


Neural Coding Of An Auditory Pitch Illusion, Maria Alejandra Barrera, Mark Sayles, Ravinderjit Singh Aug 2018

Neural Coding Of An Auditory Pitch Illusion, Maria Alejandra Barrera, Mark Sayles, Ravinderjit Singh

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Pitch is an important perceptual dimension in audition, supporting auditory object segregation, melody recognition and lexical distinction. Huggins’ pitch, for example, is a phenomenon evoked by two sources of broadband noise presented binaurally with an inter-aural phase shift over a narrow frequency band. Huggins’ pitch and other dichotic pitches have been studied extensively using perceptual experiments. Several models have been proposed to explain and predict the perception of pitch; however, no studies have tried to record in vivo neuron responses to Huggins’ pitch (HP) nor have tried to explain how the HP is coded by neurons. The existence of pitches …


The Response Of Schwann Cells To Weak Dc Electric Fields, Alexander T. Lai, Jianming Li Aug 2017

The Response Of Schwann Cells To Weak Dc Electric Fields, Alexander T. Lai, Jianming Li

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Schwann cells are glial cells that serve the vital role of supporting neurons in the peripheral nervous system. While their primary function is to provide insulation (myelin) for axons, they also help regenerate injured axons by digesting severed axons and providing scaffolding to guide the regeneration process. This specific role of Schwann cells makes them highly important cellular targets following nerve injury. Although some efforts have been made to encourage Schwann cell migration after nerve damage, the use of electric fields to control cell responses remain unexplored; therefore, this experiment serves to characterize the behavior of Schwann cells to weak …


Characterizing The Rogfp2-Orp1 Fluorescent Biosensor For Detecting Oxidative Stress In Mammalian Cells, Sara A. Doan, Stevie Norcross, Mathew Tantama Sep 2015

Characterizing The Rogfp2-Orp1 Fluorescent Biosensor For Detecting Oxidative Stress In Mammalian Cells, Sara A. Doan, Stevie Norcross, Mathew Tantama

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease involving the death of neurons in the substantia nigra and loss of the neurotransmitter, dopamine. The disease leads to progressive loss of motor control. Exact causes and mechanisms by which Parkinson’s disease proceeds are unknown, however, previous experiments determine oxidative stress in mitochondria as a factor that results in cell death. Strategies have been implemented to generate fluorescent biosensors to monitor reactive oxygen species (ROS) concentrations while simultaneously measuring the spatiotemporal distribution and correlation between the ROS, cellular function and organelle. Orp1, an enzyme found in yeast, is a sensitive oxidizing species and when …