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Theses/Dissertations

2022

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Articles 1 - 30 of 39

Full-Text Articles in Biological Psychology

Systemic Growth Factor Increases As A Result Of Exercise May Reduce Alzheimer's Disease Risk In Midlife Mice And Humans, Amanda Hewes Dec 2022

Systemic Growth Factor Increases As A Result Of Exercise May Reduce Alzheimer's Disease Risk In Midlife Mice And Humans, Amanda Hewes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder with insidious onset and slow progression. AD research has traditionally been based on neuronal and glial dysfunction due to hallmark beta-amyloid and tau pathologies. Although literature supports an association between AD and cardiovascular disease and/or cardiovascular risk factors, vascular dysfunction as an etiology of AD has been overlooked. Cardiovascular risk factors have been associated with both cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease in midlife individuals, an age at which modifiable risk factor management may be the most beneficial. Up to half of AD cases worldwide and in the USA are attributable to modifiable risk factors. …

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Hiv And Early Life Stress On Neuroimaging And Risky Behavior, Paola Garcia Egan Nov 2022

Hiv And Early Life Stress On Neuroimaging And Risky Behavior, Paola Garcia Egan

Dissertations

This study examined the interactive effects of early life stress (ELS) and HIV on brain morphometry, diffusion-basis-spectrum-imaging (DBSI), risky decision-making, and sex-risk behavior. 122 people with HIV (PWH) and 113 people without HIV (PWoH), free of major psychiatric illness and neurological confounds, were stratified into high (≥ 3 events) vs. low (< 3 events) ELS [PWoH/low ELS (n = 57), PWoH/high ELS (n =56), PWH/low ELS (n = 43), PWH/high ELS (n = 79)] and underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging, DBSI, neuropsychological, and risky-behavior assessment; all PWH were virologically controlled. Compared to PWoH, PWH had smaller orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), parietal lobes, insula, caudate and anterior cingulate. No ELS effects were detected in volumetric measures. Significant interactions were found between HIV serostatus and ELS on the OFC and on cellularity of the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus after multiple comparisons adjustment. Specifically, PWH/high ELS exhibited significantly smaller OFC and PWoH/high ELS show significantly larger OFC than the other groups. PWoH/high ELS exhibited higher DBSI cellularity (neuroinflammation proxy) of the inferior-occipital-fasciculus compared to PWoH/high ELS. Regardless of HIV status, executive function moderated the relationship between the OFC and sex-risk behavior such that individuals within the sample who performed above average on a measure of executive function and had a larger OFC reported fewer sex partners in past six months than individuals with smaller volumes. No interaction was found between HIV serostatus and ELS on risky behavior measures. Clustering analyses defined ELS subgroups in PWH that were determined by demographic characteristics, duration of infection, recent CD4+ T-cell count, nadir CD4+ T-cell count and high/low ELS.Even in PWH that are virologically controlled, without major current psychiatric comorbidities, there is evidence of a synergistic impact of ELS and HIV on OFC volumes. Higher volumes in the OFC were detrimental when associated with lower executive function scores or advantageous when associated with higher executive function. Findings suggest that ELS is associated with different brain signatures among PWoH and virally suppressed PWH. However, ELS was not directly associated with risky behaviors, and subgroups in PWH were characterized by demographic variables, past substance use and HIV clinical variables.

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The Psychotherapeutic Effects Of Consumer-Grade Eeg Neurofeedback On Mental Health And Well-Being, Madeline Slack Sep 2022

The Psychotherapeutic Effects Of Consumer-Grade Eeg Neurofeedback On Mental Health And Well-Being, Madeline Slack

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The current study assessed whether pairing mindfulness meditation with consumer-grade neurofeedback (using Muse) would be a feasible and satisfying (i.e., fulfillment and pleasure) intervention for mental health and well-being. This was assessed via a four-day mindfulness program where participants (N=34) were assigned to mindfulness with neurofeedback (n=17) or guided meditation (control; n=17) group. On each day of the program, participants engaged in two mindful sessions (five minutes each) in the morning and afternoon. Participants were administered a series of affective measures before and after the program, as well as throughout. Upon completion, participants were asked to rate …

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Dietary Approaches To The Treatment Of Autism Spectrum Disorders, Dhira Patel Sep 2022

Dietary Approaches To The Treatment Of Autism Spectrum Disorders, Dhira Patel

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This chapter reviews the literature surrounding autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and their relation to gastrointestinal (GI), behavioral, neurological, and immunological functioning. Individuals with ASDs often have poor GI health, including bowel motility issues, autoimmune and/or other adverse responses to certain foods, and lack of necessary nutrient absorption. These issues may be caused or exacerbated by restrictive behavioral patterns (e.g., preference for sweet and salty foods and/or refusal of healthy foods). Those individuals with GI issues tend to demonstrate more behavioral deficits (e.g., irritability, agitation, hyperactivity) and also tend to have an imbalance in overall gut microbiome composition, thus corroborating several …

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The Effects Of False Heartbeat Feedback On Moral Judgment, Scott Koenig Sep 2022

The Effects Of False Heartbeat Feedback On Moral Judgment, Scott Koenig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research on human morality is at a crossroads, with one side claiming that moral judgment is the result of rational inference and the other side claiming that it is the result of emotion-laden intuition. This study investigated whether emotion drives moral judgment by manipulating a core component of the experience of emotion: physiological arousal. The sample consisted of 77 undergraduate students at Brooklyn College (57% women, 43% men; mean age = 20.1). One group of participants was led to believe their heart was beating quickly, and another group slowly, while they read and evaluated a series of text vignettes depicting …

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Competitive And Facilitative Interactions Between Pavlovian Cues In Human Associative Learning: A Behavioral And Neural Analysis, Fahd Alhazmi Sep 2022

Competitive And Facilitative Interactions Between Pavlovian Cues In Human Associative Learning: A Behavioral And Neural Analysis, Fahd Alhazmi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Learning to anticipate significant events accurately is a crucial element of survival for all species. The process by which animals acquire this knowledge has been a central question of psychological research. A fundamental assumption of many learning theories is that the predictive value assigned to cues is not simply determined by their probability of reinforcement but rather by their ability to compete with other cues present during learning. The assumption of cue competition has significantly contributed to the development of behavioral and neuroscience research for decades, as it has opened the door to new empirical and theoretical advances on the …

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Neuroanatomy In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Functional Skills, Treatment Expectancy, And Comorbid Depression, Sara Rushia Sep 2022

Neuroanatomy In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Functional Skills, Treatment Expectancy, And Comorbid Depression, Sara Rushia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a neurocognitive disorder defined by cognitive decline in older adults. Although MCI has been studied for decades, there remain important areas to be explored in order to adequately characterize aspects of this disorder that provide information valuable for possible interventions and disease progression to dementia, including a better understanding of the neuroanatomical variables relevant to this disorder. Such neuroanatomical variables include cortical thickness, hippocampal volume, and white matter hyperintensities (WMHs). This dissertation consists of three separate studies aimed at addressing gaps in the literature on MCI in relation to brain morphometrics and under-studied characteristics involved …

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Effects Of Residual Arousal And Cognitive Appraisal On Psychophysiological Reactivity To Stress, Hanna Johnson Aug 2022

Effects Of Residual Arousal And Cognitive Appraisal On Psychophysiological Reactivity To Stress, Hanna Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

Generalized arousal can amplify emotional responses to a range of target stimuli, but it is not yet known whether perceiver characteristics moderate the effects of arousal as target characteristics do. This study investigated the effects of residual arousal from exercise on psychological and physiological reactivity to an active coping task, when individual appraisals of the task differed. Participants who endorsed either a positive or negative attitude toward job interviews underwent either a highly or minimally arousing exercise task, followed by a mock job interview, to which self-reported and cardiovascular responses were assessed. Using the Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat …

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Emotion Detection Using An Ensemble Model Trained With Physiological Signals And Inferred Arousal-Valence States, Matthew Nathanael Gray Aug 2022

Emotion Detection Using An Ensemble Model Trained With Physiological Signals And Inferred Arousal-Valence States, Matthew Nathanael Gray

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Affective computing is an exciting and transformative field that is gaining in popularity among psychologists, statisticians, and computer scientists. The ability of a machine to infer human emotion and mood, i.e. affective states, has the potential to greatly improve human-machine interaction in our increasingly digital world. In this work, an ensemble model methodology for detecting human emotions across multiple subjects is outlined. The Continuously Annotated Signals of Emotion (CASE) dataset, which is a dataset of physiological signals labeled with discrete emotions from video stimuli as well as subject-reported continuous emotions, arousal and valence, from the circumplex model, is used for …

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Cortisol Administration Normalizes Aberrant Functional Connectivity In Women With Depression, Adam C. Runyan Jul 2022

Cortisol Administration Normalizes Aberrant Functional Connectivity In Women With Depression, Adam C. Runyan

Dissertations

Previous resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) research has identified aberrant connectivity in several large brain networks in depression, including the default mode (DMN), frontoparietal (FPN), and salience networks (SN). Connectivity of these networks is also related to depressive symptom severity and is affected by cortisol levels. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the effects of acute cortisol administration on rsFC of DMN, FPN, and SN in individuals varying in depression history and severity. We collected resting-state fMRI scans for 74 women with and without a history of depressive disorder after administration of cortisol and placebo using a …

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Testing An Overtraining Protocol For Fear Learning In Humans, Gordon M. Haskell Jun 2022

Testing An Overtraining Protocol For Fear Learning In Humans, Gordon M. Haskell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Successful regulation of fear memories is a fundamental tenet to the exposure-based therapies often employed by mental health professionals for individuals with PTSD, phobias, and other anxiety disorders. Consequently, the efficacy of these treatment methodologies is largely dependent on the strength of the fear memory, as stronger memories are often characterized by an increased resistance to extinction and heightened fear recovery. However, there is little consensus within the scientific community regarding how to effectively maximize fear memory strength in human studies, and the literature exploring the impact of variability in acquisition parameters on memory strength is sparse. Here, we tested …

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Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu May 2022

Motivated Attention To Social And Nonsocial Reward Images: Examining Relations With Externalizing Risk In Children, Adaeze C. Egwuatu

Doctoral Dissertations

Children that exhibit issues with externalizing behaviors often experience maladaptive outcomes in later life. Externalizing problems during middle childhood (e.g., 6-10 years old) are linked to issues with emotion regulation, which are, in turn, caused by disrupted attention and emotion reactivity to reward. Externalizing problems during this period have also been linked diminished processing of social reward stimuli, suggesting externalizing risk in children may be reflected in contrasting patterns in processing of non-social and social rewards. However, research comparing how differences in affective processing of specific reward content (i.e. social versus non-social) patterns relate to externalizing behavior within normative development …

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Psychological Trauma Alters T-Lymphocyte Inflammation And Redox Through Sympathetic Mechanisms, Safwan K. Elkhatib May 2022

Psychological Trauma Alters T-Lymphocyte Inflammation And Redox Through Sympathetic Mechanisms, Safwan K. Elkhatib

Theses & Dissertations

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a devastating psychiatric disorder characterized by distinctive symptom clusters, including intrusive memories (i.e., flashbacks), avoidance of related stimuli, affective changes, and hyperarousal. Strikingly, patients with PTSD face a significantly increased risk for a number of inflammation-driven pathologies, ranging from cardiovascular to autoimmune disease. Yet, the exact etiology of this increased risk remains unknown. The immune system is known to be strongly influenced by the sympathetic nervous system, and sympathetic overactivity is a hallmark of PTSD. Lymphoid organs, such as the spleen, are richly innervated by sympathetic nerve fibers which terminate near adaptive immune …

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Early-Life Acetaminophen Exposure Alters Sex-Specific Social And Mate Preference Behaviors In Adolescent And Adult Rats, Anna G. Warner May 2022

Early-Life Acetaminophen Exposure Alters Sex-Specific Social And Mate Preference Behaviors In Adolescent And Adult Rats, Anna G. Warner

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Epidemiological studies reported associations between early-life exposure Acetaminophen (APAP) exposure and increased risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Rodent studies parallel epidemiological reports, with APAP-exposed animals showing more abnormal social and increased repetitive behaviors. However, mechanisms underlying sex-specific behavioral responses to APAP remain unclear. Here, a rat model was developed to examine possible interactions between APAP and early-life hormonal milieus during the neonatal period of brain sexual differentiation. Subcutaneous (s.c.) injections of either 17�-Estradiol (E2; masculinized) or Letrozole (LTZ; feminized) were administered from Postnatal Days (PD) 1-11 followed by either APAP or saline 45 min after the first injection on …

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Utilization Of The Fundamental Attribution Error With Increased Immune System Inflammation, John Odom May 2022

Utilization Of The Fundamental Attribution Error With Increased Immune System Inflammation, John Odom

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Immune system inflammation is associated with sickness behavior, depressive mood, and alteration of decision-making processes. Because of these cognitive effects, inflammation may also lead to increased use of heuristics, for example the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). In the current research, inflammation was experimentally increased using the influenza vaccine, with participants receiving either the vaccine or a placebo injection and completing a measure that tests for the FAE. There were no significant differences between the two conditions regarding the number of personal, situational, or overall attributions made by the participants in the measure that would indicate use of the FAE. However, …

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Differential Neural Correlates Underlying Different Cognitive Control Strategies And Their Relationship With The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Carroll Bentley May 2022

Differential Neural Correlates Underlying Different Cognitive Control Strategies And Their Relationship With The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Carroll Bentley

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Impulsivity is defined as a rapid unplanned action to a stimulus, where the person does not consider the consequences of their actions (Moeller et al., 2001). Various measurement techniques exist in the study of impulsivity and include self-report, behavioral and physiological measures. This breadth of measurement techniques affords researchers the opportunity to understand what is likely a multifaceted nature of this construct. Previous literature shows mixed results between the relationship of the three measures. The present study seeks to add clarity between the three different modalities of measuring impulsivity. To address this relationship, an undergraduate sample (n = 171) completed …

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Behavioral Effects And Neurobiological Mechanisms Of 3-Aminobenzimide In A Rodent Model Of Chronic Psychological Stress, Liza Wills May 2022

Behavioral Effects And Neurobiological Mechanisms Of 3-Aminobenzimide In A Rodent Model Of Chronic Psychological Stress, Liza Wills

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide, with a lifetime prevalence rate of approximately 20%. Inadequate pharmacological treatment methods for MDD are a significant debilitating factor. Patient estimates suggest that the treatment resistance rate for pharmacological interventions is over 30%. Postmortem analyses of human tissue of individuals diagnosed with MDD have shown an increase in Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP-1) mRNA gene expression in prefrontal cortical white matter when compared to psychiatrically normal brain tissue. In order to further investigate this issue, the present study used the social defeat stress/chronic unpredictable stress (SDS + CUS) rodent …

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Barriers To Care, Depressive Symptoms, And Moderating Factors Among Patients With Esrd, Amarachukwu O. Nwangwu Apr 2022

Barriers To Care, Depressive Symptoms, And Moderating Factors Among Patients With Esrd, Amarachukwu O. Nwangwu

Honors Theses

End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is the fifth and final stage of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and has been reported to have the highest prevalence rate in the United States, with about 2,242 cases per million in the total population in 2017 (Johansen et al., 2021). Current studies document a high prevalence of depression among patients with ESRD which may lead to increased mortality (Shirazian et al., 2017). Additionally, barriers in access to care, which may be understood as the barriers that prevent individuals from seeking mental health services, has been linked to increased levels of undertreatment (Clement et al., 2012). …

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What Does “Avoidance Mode” Feel Like? The Association Between Avoidance Awareness And Negative Affect In The Moment, Mamie Ziegler Apr 2022

What Does “Avoidance Mode” Feel Like? The Association Between Avoidance Awareness And Negative Affect In The Moment, Mamie Ziegler

Honors Theses

For students in an academic setting, task avoidance is a common behavioral strategy used to cope with the unpleasant emotions associated with schoolwork and completing assignments. However, when this form of behavioral avoidance becomes a pattern, it has the potential to lead to negative long-term consequences–such as worse academic outcomes and increased stress. To counteract maladaptive behaviors such as task avoidance, a certain level of self-awareness of such behaviors may be necessary–even if this awareness leads to more negative emotions at first. To analyze the relationship between student task avoidance and emotions, the following study utilizes ecological momentary assessment (EMA) …

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Does Chronic Risperidone Administration Affect Food Reinforcement In Adulthood In Mice?, Francis Torres, Paul Soto Apr 2022

Does Chronic Risperidone Administration Affect Food Reinforcement In Adulthood In Mice?, Francis Torres, Paul Soto

LSU Master's Theses

Second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) increase weight gain and food consumption in humans and non-human animals. It has been speculated that SGAs increase the reinforcing effects of food, which increases food consumption and drives weight gain. The current study evaluated the effects of risperidone on sucrose reinforcement in male and female C57BL/6J mice using economic demand assessments. Demand for sucrose was measured by varying the fixed ratio (FR) value required to produce sucrose delivery across experimental sessions using five FR values: 1, 5, 15, 30, and 45. The effects of acute risperidone administration on demand for sucrose were first assessed by orally …

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Classical Conditioning Of Cognitive States, Arthur Burns Apr 2022

Classical Conditioning Of Cognitive States, Arthur Burns

Neuroscience Honors Papers

Classical conditioning has been a fundamental concept and practice throughout the history of psychology. While classical conditioning traditionally seeks to elicit target behaviors in correlation to specific stimuli, we sought to do the same with cognitive states in place of behaviors. Specifically, we wanted to determine the effectiveness of conditioning states of cognitive arousal in human participants in conjunction with cues presented in a designed learning task. We designed a cognitive task specifically for this research, referred to as “the Tone Pitching Task”, which utilized a combination of working memory and mental processing in order to elicit cognitive arousal and …

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Borderline Personality Symptoms And Relationship Threat: The Moderating Role Of Perceived Parental Rejection, Elsa Baumgartner Apr 2022

Borderline Personality Symptoms And Relationship Threat: The Moderating Role Of Perceived Parental Rejection, Elsa Baumgartner

Student Research Submissions

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often perceive relationship threats more intensely, resulting in increased emotional reactivity. However, this link has never been examined with physiological measures in “real time,” nor have reports of perceived parental rejection ever been investigated as a potential moderator of this link. To fill this gap, the present study induced romantic relationship threat, after which participants completed an emotional reactivity task while electroencephalography data were recorded. Results reveal that higher levels of BPD features were associated with increased emotional reactivity, indicated by larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, to negative stimuli in the face of …

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Heart Rate Variability Following Treatment For Ptsd: Testing The Polyvagal Theory, Brittany F. Goodman Apr 2022

Heart Rate Variability Following Treatment For Ptsd: Testing The Polyvagal Theory, Brittany F. Goodman

Dissertations

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been linked to lower heart rate variability (HRV), including measures of vagal tone. Treatments targeting the autonomic nervous system (ANS) have demonstrated efficacy in improving vagal tone, but it is less clear whether similar effects can also be achieved with cognitive therapies. The polyvagal theory has suggested that symptoms of social dysfunction are linked to vagal tone through a phylogenetically organized response to stress. HRV was collected during rest, reactivity (exposure to personalized trauma scripts), and recovery using a scripted imagery paradigm in female PTSD positive physical and sexual assault survivors (N = 41) …

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Evaluation Of Hippocampal Allostatic Load-Associated Factors In Animal Models Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Relevance To Human Ptsd, Dennis Parker Kelley Mar 2022

Evaluation Of Hippocampal Allostatic Load-Associated Factors In Animal Models Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Relevance To Human Ptsd, Dennis Parker Kelley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with elevated allostatic load, nearly double the risk for metabolic syndrome, reduced hippocampal volume, and contextual memory processing deficits. Emerging evidence suggests that these stress effects may predispose individuals to the development of PTSD, and there is a known relationship between chronic stress and metabolic dysfunction. In this work, we utilized two rat models of PTSD to explore these connections. We used an acute predator odor stressor to investigate the relationship between PTSD-like behaviors and mitochondrial dysfunction in the hippocampus of rats, and we observed that conditioned place avoidance was associated with reduced mitochondrial …

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Adapting Small Unmanned Aerial Systems For Behavioral Research With Coastal Marine Mammals, Eric Angel Ramos Feb 2022

Adapting Small Unmanned Aerial Systems For Behavioral Research With Coastal Marine Mammals, Eric Angel Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marine mammals inhabit aquatic worlds where their subsurface behavior, cryptic surface profiles, and movements make them difficult to study. New tools are needed to study coastal marine mammals in a world increasing impacted by climate change related shifts in weather and animal distribution patterns. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are important remote-sensing tools for studying a range of wildlife including terrestrial and aquatic flora and fauna. These systems offer flexible platforms for adding sensor packages needed for different applications, for example, most are equipped with high-resolution cameras and GPS sensors. The vantage point from an aerial platform dramatically improves the ability …

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The Effects Of D2 Receptor Modulation On Locomotor Development In Danio Rerio, Isaiah Thomas Mcroberts Jan 2022

The Effects Of D2 Receptor Modulation On Locomotor Development In Danio Rerio, Isaiah Thomas Mcroberts

Senior Projects Spring 2022

This study utilized a novel design to investigate the sensitivity of D2 dopamine receptors to modulating compounds through multiple exposures over early development of zebrafish larvae. Zebrafish were dosed for 30 minutes from 5-8 days post fertilization (dpf) with 16µ/mol of either a D2 antagonist, haloperidol, or a D2 agonist, quinpirole hydrochloride. Two other groups were then dosed with these compounds from 9-12dpf. The effects of D2 receptor modulation were measured by analyzing motor activity on measures of movement distance, frequency, and velocity. Results indicated that larvae dosed with haloperidol on 5dpf had increased activity after the first dosage, but …

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Black Hearts Matter: A Comparative Study Of Sociodemographic, Clinical, And Psychosocial Characteristics In Black And White Persons With Heart Failure, Hannah M Anderson Hughes Jan 2022

Black Hearts Matter: A Comparative Study Of Sociodemographic, Clinical, And Psychosocial Characteristics In Black And White Persons With Heart Failure, Hannah M Anderson Hughes

Theses and Dissertations

Heart failure (HF) is a chronic, progressive, debilitating illness that disproportionately affects Black individuals, often leading to poor quality of life (QOL). Various sociodemographic, clinical, and psychological characteristics are related to QOL in patients with HF. Because most studies do not include representative Black samples or report findings from racial subgroup analyses, these relationships and any existing racial differences are not well understood. The purpose of this descriptive, comparative study was to explore the relationships among sociodemographic, clinical, and psychological characteristics and QOL in patients with HF and to determine if there were racial differences between Black and White individuals. …

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Investigating Anxiety-Like Behavior As A Non-Motor Side Effect Of Deep Brain Stimulation Of The Subthalamic Nucleus In A Parkinsonian Rat Model, Carter Mulder Jan 2022

Investigating Anxiety-Like Behavior As A Non-Motor Side Effect Of Deep Brain Stimulation Of The Subthalamic Nucleus In A Parkinsonian Rat Model, Carter Mulder

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is estimated to impact nearly 10 million people globally and is estimated to increase in the future. PD is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that worsens through continuous cell death of dopaminergic neurons. This cell death can create motor symptoms such as bradykinesia, tremor, and muscular rigidity. Subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation, STN DBS, is a surgical intervention which places stimulating electrodes in the STN greatly improving motor symptoms. However, STN DBS has been reported to possibly influence non-motor symptoms such as anxiety both acutely and long-term, which decreases the quality of life for those with PD. We …

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Double Trouble: The Development And Use Of A Novel Spatial Memory Task To Study Depression In A Female Rodent Model, Ekaterina L. Koelliker Jan 2022

Double Trouble: The Development And Use Of A Novel Spatial Memory Task To Study Depression In A Female Rodent Model, Ekaterina L. Koelliker

Honors Theses

Preclinical rodent models of depression are important for improving our understanding of the behavioral and neurobiological implications of the disorder. However, the current behavioral assays used to assess depressive symptoms in rodents have substantial shortcomings; they are basic, test animals individually, and do not evaluate animals for extended periods. The primary goals of the present study, which was divided into two experiments, were to develop a novel task that could be used to study spatial memory and to apply the task to rodent models of depression. Both experiments used a circular arena with 10 identical jars to analyze the spatial …

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Neural Correlates And Neuroanatomy Of Juvenile And Adult Contextual Fear Memory Retention, Natalie Odynocki Jan 2022

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 …

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