Biological Psychology Commons^™

Neural Correlates And Neuroanatomy Of Juvenile And Adult Contextual Fear Memory Retention, Natalie Odynocki

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

AbstractFear is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism that allows an organism to discern potential harm and act accordingly by engaging in defensive behaviors. While fear is an adaptive response, dysregulation of fear by means of a traumatic event can lead to psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Animal research using rodents in Pavlovian context fear conditioning experiments allows for the ability to study the underlying neural circuitry of threat-appropriate and aberrant fear learning and memory that may contribute to PTSD. However, despite reports that women are more than two times more likely to develop PTSD compared to men, the …

Cerebellum-Seeded Functional Connectivity Changes In Trait-Anxious Individuals Undergoing Attention Bias Modification Training, Katherine Elwell

All NMU Master's Theses

Anxiety and anxiety related disorders are increasing at a drastic rate in the past decade, with the NIMH reporting that 31.1% of U.S. adults will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Anxiety is commonly characterized by increased attention bias to threat. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) is a new treatment used to reduce individual’s attention bias towards threat. The extent to which ABM leads to underlying neural changes is still unknown. The cerebellum is a neglected brain structure, with new research provides evidence that cerebellum’s functional connectivity and shared networks with threat processing regions has a direct …

Relationships Between Age And White Matter Integrity In Children With Phenylketonuria, Erika M. Wesonga

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a hereditary metabolic disorder associated with cognitive compromise. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has allowed detection of poorer microstructural white matter integrity in children with PKU, with decreased mean diffusivity (MD) in comparison with healthy children. However, very little research has been conducted to examine the trajectory of white matter development in this population. The present study investigated potential differences in the developmental trajectory of MD between children with early- and continuously-treated PKU and healthy children across a range of brain regions.

Methods: Children with PKU (n = 31, mean age = 12.2 years) were …