Biological Psychology Commons^™

Curcumin Inhibits The Ikk:Nf-Kappa B Pathway In Neural Fear Circuits, Miguel A. Briones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study of how the brain acquires fearful memories has attracted considerable experimental attention, due in part to the promise of discovering novel therapeutic approaches for psychiatric disorders that are characterized by unusually strong and persistent traumatic memories. In recent years, extensive research has focused on studying the neural and molecular mechanisms by which fear memories are acquired, stored, and retrieved in the brain. Once acquired, fear memories may be attenuated using one of 2 procedures: 1) fear extinction, which involves repeated presentation of the fear-arousing stimulus in the absence of an aversive consequence, or 2) interference with the reconsolidation …

The Effect Of A Voice Treatment On Facial Expression In Parkinson’S Disease: Clinical And Demographic Predictors, Amanda D. Bono

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease associated with a wide range of motoric, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms. Impairments in facial mobility and emotional expressivity are common and can impair communication, in turn, affecting daily functioning and quality of life. Previous research suggests that the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment © (LSVT LOUD; Ramig et al., 2001, 2011) increases vocal loudness and facial expressivity in individuals with PD compared to PD and healthy controls. This study extends the literature by examining the effects of LSVT and an articulation-based control treatment (i.e., ARTIC) on multiple aspects of facial expressivity (i.e., emotional frequency …

A Functional Neuroimaging Study Of Self-Regulatory Control In Adults With Gambling And Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders, Nidhi Parashar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Objective: Recent findings suggest phenomenological similarities across gambling and obsessive-compulsive disorders. The key similarity between the disorders is the failure to inhibit or control a repetitive behavior (or urges to engage in a behavior) and intrusive thoughts. Our current understanding of the neural pathophysiological mechanisms linking gambling and obsessive-compulsive disorders is limited. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine the functioning of frontostriatal brain regions that support self-regulatory control in adults with gambling and obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Methods: The study compared functional magnetic resonance imaging blood oxygen level dependent response in 19 adults with pathological gambling (PG), …

Dietary Curcumin Promotes Resilience To Chronic Social Defeat Stress In A Highly Susceptible Mouse Strain, Antonio V. Aubry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chronic exposure to stress is a risk factor for the development of major depression and post traumatic stress disorder in humans and induces depressive- and anxiety-like phenotypes in rodents. However, there are few pharmacological interventions available that effectively treat maladaptive responses to chronic stress in the clinical setting. One therapeutic agent that has recently shown promise in treating psychiatric disorders is curcumin, a yellow-pigmented polyphenol compound found in the turmeric plant. Curcumin has been shown to prevent the development of stressed-induced depressive-like behavior in rodents and reduce symptoms of depression in clinically diagnosed patients. In this dissertation, I investigated whether …

The Relationship Between Cognitive And Neural Bases Of Metamemory Judgments, Alexandra M. Gaynor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory monitoring, the process of making subjective assessments of the status of one’s own memory, is crucial to guiding behavior and effective learning. Past cognitive research has shown that subjective confidence judgments are inferential in nature, and based on cues available at the time of the judgment. When confidence is based on cues that are related to objective memory performance, metamemory accuracy is high. However, past studies have shown that metamemory monitoring tends to be inaccurate because individuals base their confidence on information that is not predictive of memory success, such as the fluency with which items were encoded during …

Psychopathic Traits And P3 Modulation During Simple And Complex Target Detection Tasks, Olivia Aveson

Student Theses

Psychopathy is notable for traits of impulsivity, irresponsibility, and proneness to boredom, characteristics that are all substrates of executive function. However, event-related potential (ERP) P3 studies of attention-related abnormalities in the context of psychopathic traits have yielded inconsistent results (Gao & Raine, 2009). The current study attempted to address these discrepancies by investigating the effects of psychopathic traits on P3s during two attentional tasks. Two groups of ERP participants (n = 28) who had high (T score greater than or equal to 50) or low (T score less than or equal to 40) Psychopathic Personality Inventory – …

Neural Hypervigilance In Trauma-Exposed Women, Seungyeon A. Yoon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Trauma-exposed people often experience hypervigilance, which is a tonic condition of elevated alertness and excessive scanning for potential threat. A cardinal feature of hypervigilance is that no actual threat is needed to evoke or maintain the over-alertness and heightened affective response. However, most neuroimaging research in trauma to date has only focused on reactivity to an actual threat. Thus, the overarching aim of this dissertation was to investigate neural signatures and salivary markers of post-trauma hypervigilance in the absence of threat that can cause impairment in daily functioning and contribute to developing other trauma-related symptoms such as heightened threat reactivity. …

Biological Signatures Of Emotion Regulation In Children, Sarah Myruski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emotion regulation (ER) is a key predictor of positive adjustment throughout the lifespan. Despite decades of research on discrete ER strategy use, ER may be more appropriately measured in terms of the breadth of emotional range, or the degree to which one can flexibly modulate emotional responses. Yet little is known about ER flexibility in childhood. Also, given the crucial role of caregiver support in children’s emotional lives, ER may be most accurately measured in developmentally appropriate and ecologically valid social contexts. Further, few developmental studies have capitalized on the growing evidence base surrounding biological signatures of ER. This study …

Making Smart Choices When Faced With Risk: The Role Of Interoceptive Awareness And Life Stress On Implicit Learning., Ronald A. Nicholson

Dissertations and Theses

In complex situations where there is an unclear link between the available options and an advantageous outcome, visceral signals of arousal play a role in decision-making. Perception of the body’s various visceral signals is called interoceptive awareness (IA). Exposure to stressful events can impede the production and perception of these signals, leading to a potentially impaired perception of risk and impeded decision-making. However, there is a paucity of research exploring the impact of life event stress on IA, or how both of these factors may influence the dynamic process of decision-making during risk. To address this gap the current study …