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Biological Psychology Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Biological Psychology

Structure And Function Of Dopamine In The Inner Ear And Auditory Efferent System Of A Vocal Fish, Jonathan T. Perelmuter Sep 2019

Structure And Function Of Dopamine In The Inner Ear And Auditory Efferent System Of A Vocal Fish, Jonathan T. Perelmuter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The neuromodulator dopamine is considered essential for coordinating the internal motivational state of an organism with appropriate behavioral responses to stimuli in the external environment. This could be accomplished by modifying the function of neural circuits involved in sensory processing such that they are “tuned in” and optimally sensitive to important stimuli during critical time windows. While dopamine modulation of auditory processing has been studied in the central nervous system, neuromodulation can also occur outside the brain, in the inner ear. The majority of investigations of dopamine in the ear are conducted using rodents and focus on its role in …


Acute Social Defeat-Induced Neuroinflammation In The Vmpfc Of Syrian Hamsters Via Microglial Activation, Thomas Clarity Apr 2019

Acute Social Defeat-Induced Neuroinflammation In The Vmpfc Of Syrian Hamsters Via Microglial Activation, Thomas Clarity

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Research suggests causal relationships between neuroinflammation and stress-related psychopathologies. Exposure to moderate or chronic psychological stress in rodents leads to increased activation of microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells. The ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is a key limbic region involved in top-down regulation of psychological stress and mediates the deleterious effects of microglial activity following prolonged restraint stress. While there is a growing body of literature indicating that chronic social defeat increases microglial activity in the vmPFC, there has been little research investigating the effects of acute social defeat stress. Here, we used an acute social defeat paradigm in …


Contextually Modulated Avoidance Behavior In Rats Post-Pavlovian Extinction, Lauren Branigan Feb 2019

Contextually Modulated Avoidance Behavior In Rats Post-Pavlovian Extinction, Lauren Branigan

Theses and Dissertations

The following study sought to examine the psychological substrates of renewal (e.g.., context dependent extinction processes) for conditioned avoidance behaviors in rats. Using signaled active avoidance conditioning, rats acquired two-way shuttle responding, to two different auditory stimuli. These behaviors were then extinguished through exposure to the auditory stimuli where shuttling behavior was now without consequence. Subjects were then tested for renewal of avoidance in three distinct renewal sequences (e.g., ABA vs ABB, AAB vs AAA, and ABC vs ABB) in three separate groups of rats. It was found that subjects showed more responding to a stimulus presented outside of its …


Timing Is Everything: Temporal Dynamics Of Brain Activity Using The Human Connectome Project, Francesca Lofaro Jan 2019

Timing Is Everything: Temporal Dynamics Of Brain Activity Using The Human Connectome Project, Francesca Lofaro

Summer Research

Most neuroimaging studies produce snapshots of brain activity. The goal of this project is to examine the temporal dynamics of how these areas interact through time, using fear as a case study to assess how regions involved in fear interact. Working with Matlab computer code, I sort through the large fMRI dataset known as the Human Connectome Project to extract neuroimaging data from patients with different NIH Toolbox Fear-Somatic survey scores to assess the temporal dynamics between brain regions. The results will allow an understanding beyond which areas are involved, and instead will provide a picture of how these areas …