Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Thoughts On Consciousness And The Original Photons, Henryk Skolimowski

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

Reembodying, Human Consciousness In The Earth, John Briggs

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

For the last 20,000 years or so the dominant mode of human consciousness has been one that divides reality into subjects and objects, and focuses on human desires and needs. This anthropocentric mode of consciousness has invented religions, built civilizations, amassed knowledge, and developed technology and science. It has also disembodied us from the Earth and led to the Anthropocene Era. Still with us is another mode of human consciousness that arguably once existed in a balance with the anthropocentric mode during our long hunter-gatherer, Paleolithic sojourn. This holistic, integrative mode of consciousness experiences the Earth as a mother, and …

Sarath, Edward W. (2013). Improvisation, Creativity, And Consciousness: Jazz As Integral Template For Music, Education, And Society. Albany, Ny: State University Of New York., Lynne Roff

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

No abstract provided.

On The Significance Of Psychodynamic Discourse For The Field Of Consciousness Studies, Robin S. Brown

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Despite the obvious confluence of concerns between psychodynamic psychology and the emerging field of consciousness studies, the extent to which psychodynamic thinking has factored into the consciousness literature has been limited. With widespread interest in “the unconscious” having significantly diminished, the present paper asks what might be implied in the shift towards the notion of “consciousness”—what about this cross-disciplinary designation has come to attract attention not only within the academic world, but also in the popular press? That the term does indeed invite contributions from a variety of disciplines makes the field both a meeting space, and a battleground. It …

Premises Of A Natural Science Of Consciousness, Ervin Laszlo

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

According to the mainstream of modern science, there cannot be a natural science of consciousness because consciousness does not actually exist in nature. It is a product or by-product of the workings of the brain. There is a natural science of brain and the nervous system, for these are bona fide elements of the world, but there cannot be a natural science of a phenomenon of which the very existence is in question. In the prevalent view con2sciousness is something that happens when neurons fire in the brain. This is said to be confirmed by experience. There is no consciousness …

Consciousness Studies – An Overview, Allan Combs

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

This essay is a survey of the field of consciousness studies, its history, scope, and a little about its future. It’s principal focus is on Western thinking about consciousness beginning in classical times and continuing down to the present. It highlights and briefly describes major streams of thought including ideas from ancient Greece, German Idealism, British Empiricism, 20^th century European phenomenology, and important contemporary areas of research and scholarship. These include American pragmatism, developmental psychology, transpersonalism, analytic philosophy, computationalism, neural networks, and physics. The essay also briefly explores possible future trends in the study of consciousness.

Rapid Cortisol And Testosterone Responses To Sex-Linked Stressors: Implications For The Tend-And-Befriend Hypothesis, Jennifer Byrd-Craven, Jessica L. Calvi, Shelia M. Kennison

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Current evolutionary theories regarding the nature of hormonal responses to a variety of salient social stimuli are incomplete in yielding evidentiary support for their assertions. This study offers more nuanced evidence for the Tend-and- Befriend model of sex differences in responses to social stimuli. Participants were randomly assigned to a mortality salience prime or a control condition prior to viewing a video of an out-group threat or a video of infants crying. Cortisol and testosterone responses were assessed. The results showed that in mortality salience conditions, females showed significantly higher cortisol responses to infants crying compared to males. Further, in …

Neural Processing Of Emotional Musical And Nonmusical Stimuli In Depression, Rebecca J. Lepping, Ruth Ann Atchley, Evangelia Chrysikou, Laura E. Martin, Alicia A. Clair, Rick E. Ingram, W. Kyle Simmons, Cary R. Savage

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Background Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and striatum are part of the emotional neural circuitry implicated in major depressive disorder (MDD). Music is often used for emotion regulation, and pleasurable music listening activates the dopaminergic system in the brain, including the ACC. The present study uses functional MRI (fMRI) and an emotional nonmusical and musical stimuli paradigm to examine how neural processing of emotionally provocative auditory stimuli is altered within the ACC and striatum in depression.

Method Nineteen MDD and 20 never-depressed (ND) control participants listened to standardized positive and negative emotional musical and nonmusical stimuli during fMRI scanning and gave …

Voxel-Based Morphometry Reveals Brain Gray Matter Volume Changes In Successful Dieters, Robyn A. Honea, Amanda N. Szabo-Reed, Rebecca J. Lepping, Rodrigo Perea, Florence Breslin, Laura E. Martin, William M. Brooks, Joseph E. Donnelly, Cary R. Savage

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Objective: To compare regional brain volume predictors of percent weight loss (WL) in dieters with obesity (DwO) and in the same participants categorized as “successful” (≥7% WL) or “unsuccessful” dieters (

Role Of The Chondroitin Sulfate Proteoglycan, Neurocan, In Inhibition Of Sensory Neurite Regeneration, Madison Klump, Umang Khandpur, Chris Calulot, Adrian Centers, Diane M. Snow

Lewis Honors College Capstone Collection

In the adult mammalian brain and spinal cord, neuronal injury results in failed neurite regeneration, in part due to the up-regulation of chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs). CSPGs are molecules consisting of a protein core with covalently bound glycosaminoglycans (GAGS), specifically, chondroitin sulfate side-chains. The majority of CSPGs produced after injury originate from reactive astrocytes found in the glial scar surrounding the injury site. Although this milieu is very complex and involves more than just CSPGs, axonal regrowth may be improved if the expression of specific, highly inhibitory CSPGs produced after injury were attenuated selectively. Neurocan is one type of CSPG …

Perceived Threat Associated With Police Officers And Black Men Predicts Support For Policing Policy Reform, Allison L. Skinner, Ingrid J. Haas

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Racial disparities in policing and recent high-profile incidents resulting in the deaths of Black men have ignited a national debate on policing policies. Given evidence that both police officers and Black men may be associated with threat, we examined the impact of perceived threat on support for reformed policing policies. Across three studies we found correlational evidence that perceiving police officers as threatening predicts increased support for reformed policing practices (e.g., limiting the use of lethal force and matching police force demographics to those of the community). In contrast, perceiving Black men as threatening predicted reduced support for policing policy …

From Rainman To Rainmaker: A Presentation Of Jim’S Journey And Rapidly Advancing Technologies: Integrating Proven Behavioral Therapies With Emergent Measurement And Testing Advances Will Result In Transformational Progress In Autistic Individuals, Richard Zajac

CMC Senior Theses

The autism treatment status quo was reviewed and accompanied by a narrative contextualizing past and present progress with my younger brother Jim’s journey with the condition, sharing proposed next steps for bettering the current state of affairs in the space. The impetus for this piece was to share in the lessons of Jim’s life thus far and the revelations of those who have supported him, as well as to determine ways to create more impactful, lasting change in the limited window of early intervention therapy whilst empowering individuals on the spectrum to optimize for their skills and talents rather than …

Modulatory Actions Of Serotonergic System In Cardiac Function, Behavior, And Sensorimotor Circuit Activity In Drosophila Melanogaster, Zana R. Majeed

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

In this dissertation, I have focused on the role of serotonin (5-HT) as a modulator in heart rate, feeding and locomotion behaviors as well as sensorimotor circuit activity in Drosophila melanogaster. A general overview in the actions of the serotonergic (5-HTergic) system on the larval heart and nervous system in larvae and adults is reviewed in Chapter One. I sought to further study the actions of serotonergic system to provide additional insights into cellular and molecular underpinnings in the actions of 5-HT.In Chapter two, I present studies on mechanisms of action by 5-HT in larvae cardiac system. For this …

Sleep Alterations In Mouse Genetic Models Of Human Disease, Mansi Sethi

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Sleep is a process essential for the well-being of an animal and in humans as much as one-third of our life is spent in sleep. Yet, the biological need for sleep still remains a conundrum. Our knowledge of the genes influencing sleep and the mechanisms regulating the process can be advanced with the utilization of genetic and genomic approaches which, in turn, may inform us about the functions of sleep as well. With this goal, I have investigated and examined sleep-wake phenotypes for a variety of transgenic and knock out animals.

For the first part of my research (Chapter 3), …

Axon Initial Segment Loss Is Not Observed In The Hippocampus Of A Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis Mouse Model, Praveen Mohanraju

UROP Posters

The axon initial segment (AIS) is fundamental for neuronal communication and action potential initiation, a characteristic which has been shown to be disrupted in inflammatory diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Previous work from our lab has shown AIS breakdown in layer 5 of the cortex in a mouse model of MS known as experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). Moreover, it was shown that AIS breakdown was independent of demyelination but temporally correlated with microglial inflammatory reactivity. In order to determine if this pathology is specific to the cortex or affects other regions of the brain, we exploited these EAE induced …

Neuron Morphology Influences Axon Initial Segment Plasticity, Allan T. Gulledge, Jaime J. Bravo

Dartmouth Scholarship

In most vertebrate neurons, action potentials are initiated in the axon initial segment (AIS), a specialized region of the axon containing a high density of voltage-gated sodium and potassium channels. It has recently been proposed that neurons use plasticity of AIS length and/or location to regulate their intrinsic excitability. Here we quantify the impact of neuron morphology on AIS plasticity using computational models of simplified and realistic somatodendritic morphologies. In small neurons (e.g., dentate granule neurons), excitability was highest when the AIS was of intermediate length and located adjacent to the soma. Conversely, neurons having larger dendritic trees (e.g., pyramidal …

Allosteric Effects Of G-Protein Coupled Receptor Heteromerization: Relevance To Psychosis, Jason W. Younkin

Theses and Dissertations

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) implicated in disease are the predominant pharmaceutical targets. Growing evidence suggests that GPCRs form homo- and heteromeric complexes, resulting in allosteric functional changes. Ligands targeting one receptor can alter the function of the other receptor or receptors. Knowledge of these functional changes will provide unique opportunities to treat diseases. We examined two GPCR heteromers implicated in psychosis: mGlu2R-5HT2AR and D2R-5HT2AR. Using whole-cell patch clamp, we studied HEK-293 cells stably transfected with mGlu2R and 5HT2AR. Maximal heteromer formation allows inverse agonists to increase the G-protein activity of the opposite receptor, while sub-maximal heteromer formation does not. However, …

Lack Of Neocortex Does Not Imply Fish Cannot Feel Pain, Georg Striedter

Animal Sentience

Some contemporary scientists are using comparative neurobiological data to argue that non-mammalian vertebrates have feelings, most notably of pain (e.g., Braithwaite, 2010; Mashour and Alkire, 2012), while Key (2016) uses the same general data to reach the opposite conclusion. In a nutshell, he argues that fish cannot feel pain because fish don’t have a neocortex, which humans need to consciously experience pain. I don’t know how these scientists can look at essentially the same data and reach such disparate conclusions, but I suspect that some of them have strong a priori beliefs and, therefore, view the data through differently tinted …