Biological Psychology Commons^™

Serotonin 7 Receptor Modulation On Measures Of Working Memory And Anxiety, Antonio Gutierrez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Serotonin (5-HT) function is critical in the regulation and homeostasis of several neural systems. Alterations in 5-HT levels can directly impact the presence of neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. With a wide range of 5-HT receptors, the potential impact each of these modulators have on behavior is important to better understand. The 5-HT7 receptor is the most recently identified 5-HT receptor. 5-HT7 receptors can be found in the thalamus, hypothalamus, and several areas of the hippocampus. Modulation of these receptors impact circadian rhythms, hormonal regulation and memory function. Previous research has that 5-HT7 antagonist compounds lead to conflicting results, highlighting …

The Project That Claire, Uh I Mean The Student Completed: Relative Clauses And Repair Disfluencies, Claire O’Shaughnessy

Honors Theses

Several areas of psycholinguistics focus on the role of memory in language processing. Two of these areas are repair disfluencies and complex syntactic structures; however, these two topics have traditionally been investigated completely separately from one another. The current experiment combines these two topics by presenting listeners with spoken sentences containing subject-extracted relative clauses (SRCs) and object-extracted relative clauses (ORCs) in which the semantic similarity between the critical noun phrases (NPs) was manipulated. In addition, the sentences could be spoken fluently, or there could be a repair disfluency in which the reparandum contained information that would be potentially helpful in …

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 …

The Effects Of Antibiotics And Probiotics On Memory And Depression Across Age Groups, Amanda Powell

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The gut-brain axis is a bidirectional pathway that acts as a connection between the gut and the brain. Bacterial changes in the gut alter this pathway, affecting organism’s health, cognition, and behavior. Commensal bacteria in the gut can reduce inflammation and increase longevity while pathogenic bacteria can have opposite effects. Reduced commensal gut bacteria can result in an increase in stress activation, depression, and anxiety in both human and animal models. Increases in commensal bacteria and decreases in pathobiontic bacteria can decrease hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) system activation, anxious behavior, and depressive behavior. Alternatively, increases in pathobionts can lead to …

The Influence Of Neural Reward Processing On Memory In Depression, Nathan M. Hager

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Theories and research suggest that depression involves impaired reward sensitivity and a deficit in memory for rewarding stimuli. Some researchers propose that this memory deficit may result from reduced neural reward sensitivity, which impairs the encoding of reward-related memories, but few studies have directly probed this connection. Such research may benefit from examining the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) previously linked to reduced reward sensitivity in depression. Undergraduates with high or low self-reported depression completed a task in which they chose one of three doors, revealing a neutral word written in a color which indicated an outcome of …

Adult And Juvenile Rats Differentially Express Mpfc Glua2 Following Traumatic Memory Retrieval, Edgar Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

To advance our understanding of how traumatic memories are modulated between adults and juveniles, we characterize the AMPAr subunits, GluA1, GluA2, GluA3 in the mPFC of rodents following traumatic memory retrieval.

GluA2 was differentially expressed in adults but not juveniles rats. There were no changes in GluA1 or GluA3 expression

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 …

Social Contact Patterns Can Buffer Costs Of Forgetting In The Evolution Of Cooperation, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Jan K. Woike, Lael J. Schooler, Stefan Lindner, Thorsten Pachur

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Analyses of the evolution of cooperation often rely on two simplifying assumptions: (i) individuals interact equally frequently with all social network members and (ii) they accurately remember each partner's past cooperation or defection. Here, we examine how more realistic, skewed patterns of contact—in which individuals interact primarily with only a subset of their network's members—influence cooperation. In addition, we test whether skewed contact patterns can counteract the decrease in cooperation caused by memory errors (i.e. forgetting). Finally, we compare two types of memory error that vary in whether forgotten interactions are replaced with random actions or with actions from previous …

The Effects Of Sports Related Head Impact On Balance And Neurocognitive Functions, Shaquanda D. Ross-Simmons, Michelle L. Vieyra, Abhishek Jain, Keri Weed

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of sports-related head injury on balance, attention, and memory. Reliable differences have been found using measures that directly tap into brain functioning, such as the auditory oddball task combined with EEG recording. We hypothesized that athletes reporting a diagnosed concussion or participation in high-risk sports would have compromised balance and neurocognitive functioning compared to athletes in low risk sports. Forty-five undergraduate participants were identified as either concussed, non-concussed in high-risk sports, or non-concussed in low-risk sports using a survey of athletic history, head trauma and demographics. The Biopac MP36 system, …

Understanding The Role Of The Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex In Emotional Memory Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation And Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, R. Rachel Weintraub-Brevda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emotional stimuli can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on memory, such that emotional stimuli can be distracting from current neutral working memory goals, while also leading to enhanced episodic memory for the distracting emotional stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) has multiple roles in the enhancing effects of emotion on memory through top-down/controlled processes, including 1) coping with negative distraction and 2) elaborative encoding of negative information. Additionally, previous research has alluded to hemispheric differences in the VLPFC (Chapter 1). However, previous research has been correlational, with no strong laterality tests of the VLPFC. Two …

The Bilingual Brain, Victoria A. James

Journal of Counseling and Psychology

This literature review explores the neurocognitive effects of the bilingual brain. Many areas of bilingualism are examined such as age of acquisition, which is when the second language is attained, and memory. The three types of bilingual memory are implicit memory, which is procedural memory, explicit memory, which is declarative memory, and episodic memory, which is autobiographical memory. In relation to the bilingual brain, cognition, control, and /lateralization are also reviewed. Finally, second language (L2) learning strategies are considered. The objective of this study is to obtain an understanding on how two or more languages are acquired and processed in …

The Effects Of Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Neuroinflammation On Learning And Forgetting In Juvenile Rats, Michele Barry

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The inability to remember events experienced very early in life is referred to as Infantile Amnesia (IA) and has been observed in both humans and animals. Over the years interest in the phenomenon waned, but has recently increased with the discovery of new neurobiological methods to study brain function (e.g., Callaghan, Li & Richardson, 2014). The neurobiological mechanism behind IA has yet to be determined, but several innovative theories have been developed with these new research methods. The neurogenesis hypothesis theorizes that increased neurogenesis during early development disrupts previously established memories. The hippocampus, an area that mediates both the memory …

Reflections Of The Social Environment In Chimpanzee Memory: Applying Rational Analysis Beyond Humans, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Julian N. Marewski, Lael J. Schooler, Ian C. Gilby

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much …

Effects Of 17Β-Estradiol On Learning And Memory And Strategy Use During A Hole Board Spatial Navigation Task In Aged Male Rats, Megan Berthiaume

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Treatment with 17β- estradiol has been shown to ameliorate age related deficits in spatial learning and memory as well as to promote the use of an allocentric strategy during spatial navigation. While the majority of research using 17β- estradiol has been done using females rodents, there have been studies showing an improvement in spatial learning and memory and promoted use of allocentric strategies in spatial navigation in males as well. In males testosterone (T) is metabolized into estradiol by aromatase. As circulating levels of T decline with aging there is less available T to be metabolized into estradiol. The current …

Examining Memory Consolidation And Reconsolidation In An Appetitive Pavlovian Task, Jonathan J. Chow

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Memory plays an important role in defining how one behaves. The neurobiological mechanisms of memory have been studied extensively in animal models and the NMDA glutamate receptor has been identified to play an important role in the consolidation and reconsolidation of appetitive memories. Certain memories, depending on what was learned, can function differently and can be more difficult to disrupt based on a number of factors. Currently, no study has examined whether or not a reward-predictive stimulus attributed with incentive value is more difficult to disrupt than a stimulus that functions as a general reward-predictor. To determine the role of …

Hemispheric Bases For Emotion And Memory, Tad T. Brunyé, Sarah R. Cavanagh, Ruth E. Propper

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The goal of this Research Topic was to bring together diverse scientific perspectives on lateralized brain mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and memory. The Topic resulted in eight articles, three of which report original research and five of which review and synthesize past research with the aim of developing new hypotheses and theory. A range of international experts with diverse backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and experimental methods contributed to the Topic. Contributions strongly reflect this diversity, ranging from examining pupil dilation in response to viewing Rembrandt portraits to understanding how caffeine supplementation influences levels of spatial processing. In all cases, the authors …

Changes In Cerebral White Matter, Vascular Risk And Cognition Across The Adult Lifespan, Andrew Robert Bender

Wayne State University Dissertations

Numerous studies over the past decade have used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine associations between age, diffusion and anisotropy measures of cerebral white matter (WM), and cognitive performance. However, few have examined relationships between intra-individual change in DTI measures of WM and cognitive function. It is possible that the extant cross-sectional findings are a poor representation of age-related change in WM and cognition. The present study used latent difference-score modeling (LDM) to assess change over two years in DTI indices fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (DR), axial diffusivity (DA) and mean diffusivity (MD). In addition, we examined the effects …

The Role Of Igf-Ii In Memory Enhancement : Implications For Autism Spectrum Disorders, Amy S. Kohtz

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Cognitive and memory impairments significantly affect multiple domains in life and play major roles in disease. Identifying critical mechanisms and factors that mediate memory consolidation and enhancement may represent an important approach for increasing cognition in normal adults and preventing or treating cognitive impairments. The expression of the C/EBP- target gene insulin-like growth factor 2, (IGF-II) is required for memory consolidation; furthermore, IGF-II administration during memory consolidation produces memory enhancement, increased memory persistence and prevents forgetting. In this thesis, I investigated the therapeutic potential of IGF-II to promote memory consolidation when administered systemically. In addition, I investigated one particularly interesting …