Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does Anodal Tdcs Over The Left Prefrontal Cortex Using The F3-Rso Montage Improve Cognitive Control?, Sydney Darling

Honors Scholar Theses

Cognitive control is the ability to focus on relevant stimuli while disregarding irrelevant stimuli and is thought to be supported by the prefrontal cortex (see Miller & Cohen, 2001). Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique that modulates the activity of underlying cortex regions through an electric current provided by two or more electrodes on the scalp. This study looks to determine whether anodal tDCS over the left prefrontal cortex can be used to increase cognitive control in healthy participants. Using an F3-RSO montage in a mixed between and within subjects design (with sham vs. anodal …

Language Abilities As A Function Of Lateralization Of Language-Specific Brain Networks, Jacey Anderson

Honors Scholar Theses

The strength of hemispheric lateralization appears to be a good predictor of language abilities in children with developmental language impairments. Studies of healthy adults, in contrast, have generally failed to identify any association between degree of lateralization and language abilities, perhaps due to limited sensitivity to individual differences in standardized language assessments. This study used fMRI to measure the lateralization of functional task-engaged language networks in 25 healthy right-handed adults. Linear regressions examined lateralization indices (LI) of language activation in inferior temporal, superior temporal, and frontal brain networks, as a function of syntactic complexity (via story retelling), a grammaticality judgment …

Promoting Resilience In Self-Management (Prism): Adverse Childhood Experiences And Impacts On Emotion Regulation, Kasey Ann Macedo

Honors Scholar Theses

PRISM (Promoting Resilience in Self-Management) is a mindfulness-based intervention that aims to strengthen emotion regulation skills among individuals by employing cognitive behavioral therapy components. The purpose of the current study is to identify the relationship between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and depression, as well as to examine the changes in emotion regulation strategies of participants by comparing pre and post test data. The participants were voluntarily recruited from the Cornerstone Foundation, a homeless shelter, food pantry, and community center in Vernon, CT. The 13 participants completed PRISM through four weeks of two-hour workshop sessions in a small-group format. Results indicate …

Maternal Immune Activation (Mia) In Mice: A Study To Phenotype Asd-Related Communication Behaviors And Analyze Maternal Health Outcomes In The Us, Komalpreet Gulati

Honors Scholar Theses

Core symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) include deficits in social/communicative behaviors, and repetitive/stereotyped behaviors. Mouse models are a highly established paradigm used to study the phenotypic deficits that result from various inducible genotypic or environmental risk factors for ASD. Previous studies have demonstrated a link between maternal immune activation (MIA) and ASD-like behaviors in mouse models. In this model, the maternal immune system is activated during pregnancy by injecting the viral mimic poly(I:C). The resulting offspring are phenotyped and analyzed with regards to their communicative behaviors.

Previous studies have demonstrated that male pups born to dams with immune activation …

The Ush2a Gene: An Analysis Of Ultrasonic Vocalizations In A Mouse Model Of Usher Syndrome Type 2, Kiana R. Akhundzadeh

Honors Scholar Theses

Usher syndrome type 2 is a complex autosomal recessive genetic disorder that is characterized by moderate to severe congenital sensorineural hearing loss, the onset of retinitis pigmentosa in the second decade of life, and in some cases, vestibular dysfunction. Mutations in the USH2A gene account for 85% of cases of type 2. The USH2A gene is responsible for encoding the protein usherin, which has an important role in the development and function of inner ear hair cells and retinal photoreceptors. Until recently, it has been believed that carriers of the USH2A mutation were phenotype free. However, recent data has suggested …

The Effect Of Idiomatic Language On Event Processing, Katrina Turick

Honors Scholar Theses

Mental representations of object states are necessary to keep track of changing objects in the world. When the object undergoes change and there are two representations, it creates competition between the object states. This is seen in sentences during which an object changes and is then subsequently referred to again (e.g. “The chef will chop the onion. And then, he will sniff the onion.”). When there is a larger degree of change between the states of the object, there is more competition, which is indicated by an increase in reading time when the object is referred to for the second …

Intensive Sound Production Treatment For Apraxia Of Speech: An Analysis Of Error Consistency, Victoria M. Abolafia

Honors Scholar Theses

In the past, clinicians have diagnosed acquired apraxia of speech based upon the presentation of an inconsistent error pattern. However, recent research studies have begun to suggest quite the contrary, pointing towards a consistent pattern of errors in the speech of those with apraxia. The present study utilized an intensive Sound Production Treatment (SPT) for a 51-year-old male with severe acquired apraxia of speech and moderate-severe aphasia. Treatment was administered over a period of five days per week, three hours a day, for two consecutive weeks. During this treatment, probes were gathered daily to evaluate the efficacy of the intensive …

Central Auditory Processing And The Link To Reading Ability In Adults, Lisa M. Brody

Honors Scholar Theses

What makes someone a good reader? What makes someone a poor reader? The root biological marker of reading ability has yet to be determined. Many scientists agree that phonological awareness, the understanding of speech sounds, and phonological decoding are key components of reading ability (Melby-Lervag, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012). In addition to this, new research suggests that the auditory system, specifically the timing of auditory processing in the brain, provides a crucial platform that supports the development of reading ability (Banai et al., 2009). This thesis provides empirical data to support the link between reading skill …

Spike Field Coherence (Sfc) For Ripples In Rat Hippocampus, Pranav Singla

Honors Scholar Theses

The aim of this project was to determine coherence between two types of neural recordings which can be obtained from the rat hippocampus: spikes and local field potentials. Extracellular recording makes it possible to determine spiking activity from individual neurons in the vicinity of the recording electrode. Local field potential recording gives a combined activity of many neurons (thousands) at once to determine an overall picture of the coordination of the cells in real time. Here we examine the relationship between these two signals, focusing on place cells which spike at their maximal rate only at certain positions in physical …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Electrophysiological Changes In P200 Latency And Amplitude Of Jittered Orientation Visual Integration Task In Healthy Participants: A Multi-Block Design Eeg Study, Monika M. Rozynski, Chi-Ming Chen

Honors Scholar Theses

Visual integration, the ability to fuse environmental information such as light, color, shades, and motion to form a representation of a whole cohesive higher-order visual image, is impaired in persons with schizophrenia. Little is known how the P200 component, an event-related potential (ERP) in the parieto-occipital region, is affected in persons with schizophrenia while they perform visual integration tasks, when compared to healthy persons. This study administered Gabor contours that varied in high and low degrees of orientational jitter through the Jitter Orientation Visual Integration (JOVI) task to investigate visual integration by analyzing latency and amplitude of the P200 component. …

Electrophysiological Changes Of N100 Latency And Amplitude In Healthy Participants Performing The Jitter Orientated Visual Integration Task: A Multi-Block Design Study, Fariya Naz

University Scholar Projects

The present study investigated the differences in processing during visual integration in healthy adults. The visual N100 indexes early visual discrimination and in this case, was hypothesized to show differences in both latency and amplitude depending on the level of difficulty which corresponds to orientational jitter in a visual integration task. Four blocks with pseudo-random levels of jitter were presented to participants in the Jitter Oriented Visual Integration (JOVI) task. Results looking at the Oz channel showed significant reduction in amplitude in the visual N100 during the more difficult levels condition of the task. The multi-block design, originally expected to …

Effort-Related Choice Behavior Is Affected By Pharmacological Manipulations Associated With Depression: The Effects Of Tetrabenazine, Megan Huizenga

Honors Scholar Theses

In humans, psychiatric symptoms such as anergia and psychomotor retardation reflect pathologies in behavioral activation. These motivational symptoms are fundamental aspects of depression and other disorders. Drugs such as reserpine and tetrabenazine deplete monoamines, including dopamine, and induce depressive like behaviors in humans. Our results indicate that administration of low doses of tetrabenazine can alter effort-related choice behavior, biasing animals towards low effort alternatives. These findings may be related to the ability of monoamine depleting agents such as tetrabenazine to blunt behavioral activation and induce psychomotor retardation, anergia and fatigue in humans, and this research could be useful for the …

Habituation Effect In Attention Modification Training For Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Olivia E. Bogucki

Honors Scholar Theses

Attention biases influence the type of information that captures an individual’s attention. Cognitive theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) state that attention biases cause an increased amount of attention to personally relevant threatening information. Previous studies support this connection, and have examined attention modification training (AMT) as a means to direct attention away from threatening information for various anxiety disorders, including OCD. Results show that attention biases toward threatening information decrease during a single training session of AMT, which may be a result of habituation to threat. However, there is a lack of longitudinal data investigating the number of AMT sessions …

Longitudinal Changes In Pronoun Reversals In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Typically Developing Children, Michelle Cheng

Honors Scholar Theses

Pronoun reversals occur when a pronoun is incorrectly mapped to the wrong referent. For example, when a child says, “You eat the cookie!” and intended to state that he is eating a cookie. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD, are known to be frequent reversers, but their development of these reversals; for example, incidence rate and endpoint, is still unknown. In this study, children interacted with their mothers in a 30-minute play session and their spontaneous pronoun usage were coded for the perspective of the pronoun, type of reversal, and case errors. Children with ASD to their typically developing (TD) …

Language-Specific Tuning Of Audiovisual Integration In Early Development, Juliana Flynn

Honors Scholar Theses

According to the perceptual narrowing hypothesis, older infants look longer towards speech in a native language than towards a non-native language. We presented speech in English, Spanish, and mis-matched English and Spanish speech, and recorded looking-time towards the speech. Results suggest that the synchrony of speech plays a strong role in infants' attention to speech, whereas nativeness of language does not.

Emotional Content In Autobiographical Memory Through An Attachment Theory Framework, Elizabeth Tsatkin

Honors Scholar Theses

The current study investigates the relationship between individual differences in attachment style and the recall of autobiographical memories. According to attachment theory, affect regulation strategies employed by individuals high in attachment anxiety and high in attachment avoidance are likely to influence how information about the past is recalled. This study examines how attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance relate to the presence of negative emotions in autobiographical memories of upsetting events with important relationship figures (i.e., mother, father, or roommate). Participants included 248 undergraduate students ranging from ages 18-22 that attend a public university in the northeast. As hypothesized, individuals with …

The Self-Reference Effect In Memory: A Meta-Analysis, Cynthia S. Symons, Blair T. Johnson

CHIP Documents

No abstract provided.