Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Optimization Of Tyrosine Hydroxylase Antibody For Immunohistochemistry Fluorescence Detection In Zebrafish (Danio Rerio), Madison Thurber

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter produced through the catecholamine synthesis pathway that affects brain activity. Unregulated dopamine levels can lead to various diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Optimization of an immunohistochemistry protocol will allow for the quantification of tyrosine hydroxylase antibody, which indirectly allows for dopamine quantification in dopaminergic regions within the brain. However, the antibody concentration to give the optimal signal-to-noise ratio in IHC varies across studies. Through this experiment, I determined the concentration of tyrosine hydroxylase (TyrH) antibody for immunohistochemistry that gave the best signal-to-background noise ratio within several known dopaminergic regions …

Zebrafish Electroretinogram Responses, Brooke Campbell

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The goal of this project is to be able to streamline a protocol for conducting ERGs on zebrafish from mice ERG protocol already present in Dr. Renna’s lab. The objective is to create a protocol specifically for zebrafish and to eliminate any issues that occur when transiting from a mice ERG protocol to a zebrafish ERG protocol and to obtain a light response from zebrafish retinae in differing light intensities. Dr. Renna’s lab has designed an Ex Vivo ERG system with less electrical interference creating defined electrical responses from mouse retina. The setup allows for continual perfusion of the retinal …

Let Kids Sleep: The Role Of Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Outreach In Stimulating Brains And Developing Research-Informed Approaches To Community Concerns, Marc Chenard

University Honors Theses

Northwest Noggin (NW Noggin), an all-volunteer neuroscience education outreach non-profit, serves its community by bringing students, artists, scientists and other participants together for artistic collaboration and learning. The outreach takes place in K-12 schools and other institutions (such as museums, coffee shops and correctional facilities) all over the Pacific Northwest. Neuroscience education outreach generates discourse surrounding community concerns through illuminating the brain-centric qualities of issues and by drawing on neuroscience research to create solutions. The neuroscience research-informed perspectives on these concerns stimulate awareness, create momentum towards evidence-based reform, and can result in policy interventions. This thesis details how NW Noggin …

Using Neural Signals To Investigate Athlete Burnout, Mathew R. Hammerstrom, Thomas D. Ferguson, Hendrik L. Pepler, Anthony Pluta, Gordon Binsted, Olave Krigolson

NeuroSports

Objective: In the present study, we examined the relationships between athlete burnout, brain function, and self-assessment of performance, and how these relationships can be quantified using mobile electroencephalography (mEEG). Specifically, we performed this study to determine whether mEEG can be utilized as an objective measure of athlete burnout. In addition, we sought to determine whether there was any relationship between athlete burnout and athlete self-assessment of performance while controlling for our neural results.

Methods: We tested these relationships in a sample of high-performance athletes – whereby we had athletes complete an mEEG assessment and also had the athletes complete a …

Limits To Sentience, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

There are many parallels between cellular function in animals and plants. Plants can have complex interactions with their environments. But they lack a central nervous system, which is a prerequisite for sentience (the capacity to feel). In my view the suggestion that plants are sentient is not only empirically incorrect but potentially harmful to the efforts to protect the welfare of sentient beings.

Examining Movement-Specific Reinvestment And The Yips In Professional Baseball, Lazaro Gutierrez Mba, Ma, Phd, Pradeep R. Vanguri Phd, Lat, Atc

NeuroSports

The sudden inability of a professional baseball player to throw the baseball accurately, a condition known as the “yips”, is considered a motor movement disruption. Movement-specific reinvestment, including movement self-consciousness (MS-C) and conscious motor processing (CMP), explains the disruption of well-learned motor movements in different performance domains such as throwing. The purpose of this quantitative, causal-comparative study is to examine movement-specific reinvestment level differences between self-reported yips-afflicted and non-afflicted professional baseball players in the United States as measured by the Movement Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS). A total of 130 professional baseball players (65 yips-afflicted and 65 non-afflicted) participated in the …

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Studies Investigating The Role Of The Dlpfc In Memory And Metamemory, Casey M. Imperio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory, broadly defined as knowledge about one’s own memory, is thought to consist of two separate processes, monitoring, the ability to assess the contents of your own memory, and control, altering behavior in service of memory, that work together to aide in encoding and retrieval processes. Prior work has shown that metamemory monitoring accuracy can be improved in a semantic memory task via high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS), a form of non-invasive brain stimulation, over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Over three experiments, the current dissertation sought to replicate and extend this work by: 1) testing the effects …

Modulatory Effects Of Schreckstoff On The Startle Escape Response Of Goldfish (Carassius Auratus), Denis Shor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Fish face a variety of stressors in nature, a prominent one being a predatory threat to which they respond with an adaptive behavioral response thus maximizing their chances of survival. A primary anti-predatory behavior is a startle response or C-start. This behavior is controlled by two large reticulospinal neurons, the Mauthner cells (M-cells) which integrate multimodal sensory inputs. Detecting a predator involves various sensory information such as visual and mechanosensory cues but also olfaction. Indeed, following an attack, an injured fish will release an alarm pheromone (Schreckstoff) and thus acutely alert close by conspecifics. However, whether the alarm pheromone in …

Statistical And Biological Analyses Of Acoustic Signals In Estrildid Finches, Moises Rivera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Acoustic communication is a process that involves auditory perception and signal processing. Discrimination and recognition further require cognitive processes and supporting mechanisms in order to successfully identify and appropriately respond to signal senders. Although acoustic communication is common across birds, classical research has largely disregarded the perceptual abilities of perinatal altricial taxa. Chapter 1 reviews the literature of perinatal acoustic stimulation in birds, highlighting the disproportionate focus on precocial birds (e.g., chickens, ducks, quails). The long-held belief that altricial birds were incapable of acoustic perception in ovo was only recently overturned, as researchers began to find behavioral and physiological evidence …

The Effects Of Music Therapy On Elderly Adults With Dementia, Jeante J. Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As people age, the brain is more susceptible to changes that diminish cognitive function. In recent years neuroscience has found convergent evidence between music therapy and brain architecture, as it has shown the generation of new connections in the brain or a reorganization and possible strengthening of existing connections already in the brain. However, the literature regarding music training’s effects on executive control, selective attention, and speech processing is lacking particularly when it comes to older populations.

This study investigated Verbal Working Memory, Visuospatial Attention and Task Initiation, and Auditory Selective Attention in a 91-year-old adult (B.P.) diagnosed with dementia. …

Community-Derived Core Concepts For Neuroscience Higher Education, Audrey Chen, Kimberley A. Phillips, Jennifer E. Schaefer, Patrick M. Sonner

Biology Faculty Publications

Core concepts provide a framework for organizing facts and understanding in neuroscience higher education curricula. Core concepts are overarching principles that identify patterns in neuroscience processes and phenomena and can be used as a foundational scaffold for neuroscience knowledge. The need for community-derived core concepts is pressing, because both the pace of research and number of neuroscience programs are rapidly expanding. While general biology and many subdisciplines within biology have identified core concepts, neuroscience has yet to establish a community-derived set of core concepts for neuroscience higher education. We used an empirical approach involving more than 100 neuroscience educators to …

Rhythms In Barriers And Fluids: Circadian Clock Regulation In The Aging Neurovascular Unit, Lea Skapetze, Sharon Owino, Eng H. Lo, Ken Arai, Martha Merrow, Mary Harrington

Neuroscience: Faculty Publications

The neurovascular unit is where two very distinct physiological systems meet: The central nervous system (CNS) and the blood. The permeability of the barriers separating these systems is regulated by time, including both the 24 h circadian clock and the longer processes of aging. An endogenous circadian rhythm regulates the transport of molecules across the blood-brain barrier and the circulation of the cerebrospinal fluid and the glymphatic system. These fluid dynamics change with time of day, and with age, and especially in the context of neurodegeneration. Factors may differ depending on brain region, as can be highlighted by consideration of …

Into The Unknown: Exploring The Role Of Uncertainty In Threat-Safety Discrimination, Maia Kinney-Petrucha

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Learning to predict the arrival of threat is crucial to survival. Key to this learning process is the ability to discriminate between which stimuli signify safety and which signify threat. The extent to which a threat is uncertain impacts this ability, but which factors of uncertainty are primarily responsible remains unresolved. Uncertainty at the level of the stimulus can be examined in threat learning paradigms by adjusting threat reinforcement rate, referring to the frequency at which a cue is reinforced with an aversive stimulus. Previous research has shown that a continuous (more certain) threat reinforcement is associated with enhanced threat …

Plant Sentience: Getting To The Roots Of The Problem, Krzysztof Dolega, Savannah Siekierski, Axel Cleeremans

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin’s (2023) target article invites us to consider the possibility that plants can experience subjectively felt states. We discuss this speculation on the basis of the functional neurobiology of consciousness. We suggest that demonstrating plant sentience would require that we identify not only behaviors analogous to those exhibited by sentient creatures, but also the functional analogues of the mechanisms causing such behaviors. The lack of clear evidence for any kind of integration between self-states, self-movement, environmental states, memory, or affective communication within plants suggests that plant sentience remains an admittedly fascinating, but ultimately merely provocative speculation.

Dissociation Between Conscious And Unconscious Processes As A Criterion For Sentience, Ivan Ivanchei, Nicolas Coucke, Axel Cleeremans

Animal Sentience

Based on the literature on human consciousness, we suggest that to demonstrate sentience in a system, one needs to demonstrate both conscious and unconscious processing in the system. Major theories of consciousness require the existence of both conscious and unconscious processes. Contrasting effects of conscious and unconscious processes have been successfully used in human studies and have begun being applied in animal sentience research as well.

Neuropsychiatric Sequelae Of Traumatic Brain Injury: The Impact Of Aggression And Self-Perception On The Quality Of Life Of The Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors, Aida Bazarganpour

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The occurrence of neuropsychiatric sequelae is frequently observed among survivors of traumatic brain injury (TBI). These neuropsychiatric sequelae can characterize the quality of life of TBI survivors. Among these neuropsychiatric conditions, aggression and self-perception are significant because of their potential to impair survivors’ well-being. Long-term social isolation, common among TBI survivors, has also been linked with an increased likelihood of aggressive behavior. However, research investigating the effects of aggression and self-perception on quality of life of TBI survivors is limited. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the relationships connecting aggression and self-perception with quality of life of …

The Role Of Complement In Stroke And Traumatic Brain Injury, Christine Couch

MUSC Theses and Dissertations

Brain and neural injury are a non-specific disease category that includes traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke. Both TBI and stroke are common, costly, and leading causes of severe disability in adults. Both stroke and TBI are responsible for substantial disability in working age adults, with stroke being the second leading cause of death worldwide [1] and TBI a major cause of disability in people younger than their 40's [2]. The immune response after brain injury is multifactorial and involves both local and systemic events at the cellular and molecular level. The complement system is a component of both the …

Examining The Use Of Expressive Arts Therapies In Neurorehabilitation Treatment Planning, Rebecca J. Horner

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Those undergoing neurorehabilitation after stroke and traumatic brain injury report a diminished sense of overall wellness. This paper examines the conceivable benefits of introducing expressive arts therapies, which is the therapeutic use and combination of the visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing and other intermodal creative processes, into physical therapy and neurorehabilitation treatment planning. Expressive arts therapies have the capacity to engage with an individual’s physical, emotional, social and spiritual states concurrently. They simultaneously offer the ability to promote an increased sense of well-being, address mind-body disconnects, and process trauma non-verbally.

The sections of this narrative literature review focus on …

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …