Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

Blood–Brain Barrier Breakdown And Astrocyte Reactivity Evident In The Absence Of Behavioral Changes After Repeated Traumatic Brain Injury, Celeste Dunn, Nasya Sturdivant, Sara Venier, Syed Ali, Jeffery Wolchok, Kartik Balachandran

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Repeated traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) cause debilitating effects. Without understanding the acute effects of repeated TBIs, treatment options to halt further degeneration and damage cannot be developed. This study sought to examine the acute effects of blood–brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction, edema, inflammation and behavioral changes after either a single or double TBI using a C57BL/6 mouse model. We examined the effects of one or two TBIs, of either a mild or moderate severity. Double injuries were spaced 7 days apart, and all analysis was performed 24 h post-injury. To examine edema and inflammation, protein levels of glial fibrillary acidic protein …

Estimating Progression Rates Across The Spectrum Of Alzheimer’S Disease For Amyloid-Positive Individuals Using National Alzheimer’S Coordinating Center Data, Michele Potashman, Marric Buessing, Mihaela Levitchi Benea, Jeffrey Cummings, Soo Borson, Peter Pemberton-Ross, Andrew J. Epstein

School of Medicine Faculty Research

Introduction: Published estimates of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) progression do not capture the full disease continuum. This study provides transition probabilities of individuals with amyloid-β (Aβ+) pathology across the disease continuum. Methods: Patient-level longitudinal data from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center were used to estimate progression rates. Progression rates through five clinically defined AD stages—asymptomatic, mild cognitive impairment due to AD (MCI-AD), mild AD dementia, moderate AD dementia, severe AD dementia—and death were measured as transition probabilities. Rates were assessed in “incident” patients who recently entered the stage, controlling for covariates. Transition probabilities were generated from multinomial logit regression models that …

An Empirical Comparative Study On The Two Methods Of Eliciting Singers’ Emotions In Singing: Self-Imagination And Vr Training, Jin Zhang, Ziming Xu, Yueying Zhou, Pengpai Wang, Ping Fu, Xijia Xu, Daoqiang Zhang

Library Scholarship

Emotional singing can affect vocal performance and the audience’s engagement. Chinese universities use traditional training techniques for teaching theoretical and applied knowledge. Self-imagination is the predominant training method for emotional singing. Recently, virtual reality (VR) technologies have been applied in several fields for training purposes. In this empirical comparative study, a VR training task was implemented to elicit emotions from singers and further assist them with improving their emotional singing performance. The VR training method was compared against the traditional self-imagination method. By conducting a two-stage experiment, the two methods were compared in terms of emotions’ elicitation and emotional singing …

Developing Methods To Detect And Diagnose Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy During Life: Rationale, Design, And Methodology For The Diagnose Cte Research Project, Jeffrey Cummings, Numerous Authors, See Full List Below

School of Medicine Faculty Research

Background: Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease that has been neuropathologically diagnosed in brain donors exposed to repetitive head impacts, including boxers and American football, soccer, ice hockey, and rugby players. CTE cannot yet be diagnosed during life. In December 2015, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke awarded a seven-year grant (U01NS093334) to fund the “Diagnostics, Imaging, and Genetics Network for the Objective Study and Evaluation of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (DIAGNOSE CTE) Research Project.” The objectives of this multicenter project are to: develop in vivo fluid and neuroimaging biomarkers for CTE; characterize its clinical presentation; refine …

Aducanumab: Appropriate Use Recommendations, Jeffrey Cummings, Steve Salloway

School of Medicine Faculty Research

Aducanumab recently received accelerated approval by the FDA. An Expert Panel was comprised to provide recommendations on appropriate use of aducanumab in real world practices. Patient selection, aducanumab administration and monitoring, management of ARIA, and best practices in patient care in the context of aducanumab therapy are described. The paper was published in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease.

Classical Conditioning Of Cognitive States, Arthur Burns

Neuroscience Presentations

This research sought out to do preliminary testing to prepare for honors research in the 2021 academic year. This research focuses on attempting to classically condition cognitive states. Learning tasks were designed to elicit relaxation or arousal in partisans and a combination of EEG data, pupil dilation data, performance on cognitive tasks, and self-report were used to evaluate the level of cognitive states in participants.

Eeg Features Of Explore-Exploit Decision-Making In Alcohol Use Disorder, Ethan Campbell

Psychology ETDs

Little research has assessed explore-exploit behavior in addiction using drug cues and even fewer studies have measured the neural activity underlying these behaviors. The present study aims to explore brain mechanisms of disordered decision-making in alcohol use disorder (AUD) through electroencephalography (EEG) during performance of a novelty bandit task with alcohol imagery and using a validated computational model of explore-exploit dynamics. Individuals with AUD (n = 28) and age and sex-matched controls (n = 27) showed differences in choice behavior and showed differences in EEG activity as a function of exploratory behavior, chosen stimulus type, and explore-exploit computational …

Christianity And Fear: The Neuropsychological Processes Involved In The Relationship Between Fear And Religion, Courtney Welch-Horstman

Obsculta

Religion frames the lives and minds of individuals who practice the Christian faith. Regarding the mind, this statement can be understood both figuratively and literally. The thought processes of human beings who claim to believe in God are strongly influenced by their perspective of Deity and what they think God's primary characteristic is. While some view God as loving, others view God as mainly angry and punishing. The way this question is answered by an individual reveals much about his or her neurocircuitry and which brain structures are most active and developed. These circuits and structures then impact the behaviors …

Medical Schools Ignore The Nature Of Consciousness At Great Cost, Anoop Kumar

Journal of Wellness

The essential question of the relationship between consciousness and matter is ignored in medical school curricula, leading to a machine-like view of the human being that contributes to physician burnout and intellectual dissatisfaction. The evidence suggesting that the brain may not be the seat of consciousness is generally ignored to preserve the worldview of the primacy of matter. By investigating new frameworks detailing the nature of consciousness at different levels of hierarchy, we can bring intellectual rigor to a once opaque subject that supports a fundamental reality about our experience: We are human beings, not only human bodies.

Acute Effect Of High‑Definition And Conventional Tdcs On Exercise Performance And Psychophysiological Responses In Endurance Athletes: A Randomized Controlled Trial, Daniel Gomes Da Silva Machado, Marom Bikson, Abhishek Datta, Egas Caparelli‑Dáquer, Gozde Unal, Abrahão F. Baptista, Edilson Serpeloni Cyrino, Li Min Li, Edgard Morya, Alexandre Moreira, Alexandre Hideki Okano

Publications and Research

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been used aiming to boost exercise performance and inconsistent findings have been reported. One possible explanation is related to the limitations of the so-called “conventional” tDCS, which uses large rectangular electrodes, resulting in a diffuse electric field. A new tDCS technique called high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) has been recently developed. HD-tDCS uses small ring electrodes and produces improved focality and greater magnitude of its aftereffects. This study tested whether HD-tDCS would improve exercise performance to a greater extent than conventional tDCS. Twelve endurance athletes (29.4 ± 7.3 years; 60.15 ± 5.09 ml kg− 1 min− …

Cerebellum-Seeded Functional Connectivity Changes In Trait-Anxious Individuals Undergoing Attention Bias Modification Training, Katherine Elwell

All NMU Master's Theses

Anxiety and anxiety related disorders are increasing at a drastic rate in the past decade, with the NIMH reporting that 31.1% of U.S. adults will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Anxiety is commonly characterized by increased attention bias to threat. Attention Bias Modification (ABM) is a new treatment used to reduce individual’s attention bias towards threat. The extent to which ABM leads to underlying neural changes is still unknown. The cerebellum is a neglected brain structure, with new research provides evidence that cerebellum’s functional connectivity and shared networks with threat processing regions has a direct …

The Balance Of Excitation And Inhibition And Its Influence On Cortical States And Rett Syndrome, Jingwen Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Our brain consists of billions of neurons, properly coordinating to process information and realize brain functions. Among them, there are two types of neurons: excitatory neurons and inhibitory neurons. The firing of excitatory neurons increases the membrane potential of downstream neurons, and thus excites other neurons to fire. The firing of inhibitory neurons, in contrast, decreases the membrane potential of downstream neurons, and thus inhibits other neurons to fire. The interplay of excitatory and inhibitory neurons shape the spiking activity in the population. Thus, the `balance of excitation and inhibition' plays an important role in cortical processing and brain functions. …

The Effect Of A Mindfulness-Based Intervention On Attention And Cognitive Control As A Function Of Smartphone Notifications., Joshua D. Upshaw

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Barriers to accessing mobile technology, particularly smartphones, have decreased substantially since the iPhone’s release in 2007, resulting in increased ownership and usage across all ages, genders, and races. Despite their ubiquity in our society, relatively little empirical work has investigated the influence of smartphones on our higher order executive functioning. Prior work has linked smartphone use with impaired cognitive control during cognitively demanding tasks, especially in heavier smartphone users. The goals of the current study were twofold. First, the study aimed to examine the effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control and attention. And second, to determine the effects of …

The Neurological Asymmetry Of Self-Face Recognition, Aleksandra Janowska, Brianna Balugas, Matthew Pardillo, Victoria Mistretta, Katherine Chavarria, Janet Brenya, Taylor Shelansky, Vanessa Martinez, Kitty Pagano, Nathira Ahmad, Samantha Zorns, Abigail Straus, Sarah Sierra, Julian Keenan

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

While the desire to uncover the neural correlates of consciousness has taken numerous directions, self-face recognition has been a constant in attempts to isolate aspects of self-awareness. The neuroimaging revolution of the 1990s brought about systematic attempts to isolate the underlying neural basis of self-face recognition. These studies, including some of the first fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) examinations, revealed a right-hemisphere bias for self-face recognition in a diverse set of regions including the insula, the dorsal frontal lobe, the temporal parietal junction, and the medial temporal cortex. In this systematic review, we provide confirmation of these data (which are …

Where To Draw The Line: Evaluating Visuospatial And Attentional Processing In Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Alisha Steigerwald

University Honors Theses

Objective: We investigated visuospatial processing in individuals with autism using bisection and quadrisection tasks to evaluate the presence of a possible downward vertical spatial bias that could provide insights into the preference for attending to the mouth in ASD populations.

Methods: Twenty participants with ASD and 20 age, IQ, and sex-matched control participants were recruited (ages 6-23). Participants were asked to bisect, quadrisect from the top, and quadrisect from the bottom vertical lines placed in their left, center, and right visual spaces. Distance from the true midpoint and quadripoint were calculated and compared between the two groups.

Results: No significant …

The Effect Of Diazepam On Early Neural Stem Cells Proliferative Activity And Hippocampal-Dependent Memory After Traumatic Brain Injury, Van Khanh Doan

University Honors Theses

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) induces an upregulation of neurogenesis in the brain specifically in the hippocampus, an area pertaining to learning and memory formation. Although this upregulated response is intuitively thought to be restorative, previous studies show that the nascent neurons generated after TBI exhibit abnormalities, such as aberrant morphologies and early migrations, which could suggest to be maladaptive. The GABA-A agonist diazepam has been shown to inhibit this upregulation in neurogenesis and normalizes dendrites after TBI. To determine whether this modulation of neurogenesis is ultimately beneficial or detrimental to cognitive recovery, diazepam was administered to C57BI/6J wild-type mice following …

Severe Covid-19 In Alzheimer’S Disease: Apoe4’S Fault Again?, Nian Xiong, Martin R. Schiller, Jingwen Li, Xiaowu Chen, Zhicheng Lin

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Challenges have been recognized in healthcare of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in the COVID-19 pandemic, given a high infection and mortality rate of COVID-19 in these patients. This situation urges the identification of underlying risks and preferably biomarkers for evidence-based, more effective healthcare. Towards this goal, current literature review and network analysis synthesize available information on the AD-related gene APOE into four lines of mechanistic evidence. At a cellular level, the risk isoform APOE4 confers high infectivity by the underlying coronavirus SARS-CoV-2; at a genetic level, APOE4 is associated with severe COVID-19; at a pathway level, networking connects APOE …

Examining The Transient Neural Dynamics Underlying Working Memory Maintenance For Complex Visual Stimuli, Chelsea Reichert Plaska

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Working memory (WM) is the temporary storage of information to accomplish a future goal. The WM delay period is the time after encoding but before retrieval when information is being maintained, typically in the absence of relevant stimuli. Understanding how the brain supports maintenance during the delay period, and how neural activity and connectivity are related to memory is critical for advancing both basic knowledge as well as informing declines in memory and cognition related to neurodegenerative diseases and healthy aging. An open question in the field of WM research is how information is stored during this delay period. One …

Using Fnirs To Identify Brain Regions Involved In Emotional Face Processing In Infants At High Risk For Autism Spectrum Disorder, Christian Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Faces provide an abundance of salient information, and within a few hours of being born, infants already show preferential attention to faces and face-like stimuli. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder consisting of social communication and interaction difficulties, and individuals with ASD show differences in the behavioral and neural processing of faces. Prospective studies with infants at high risk for ASD (HRA; by virtue of an older sibling with ASD) have begun to look at whether responses to faces could be an early marker of later ASD. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the current study measured oxygenated hemoglobin …

Functional Connectivity Changes In The Default Mode Network In Moderate-To-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury, Emily J. Haight

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients are known to have altered functional connectivity (FC), which has cognitive and behavioral significance and bears clinical implications. Previous literature has discovered a hyperconnectivity response to TBI, most notably in the default mode network (DMN). However, the exact pattern of changes in resting FC during the first year of recovery is unknown. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate longitudinal connectivity patterns in the DMN of 28 moderate-to-severe TBI patients as compared to 33 demographically matched healthy controls (HC). FC was assessed at 3, 6, and 12 months post-injury for patients using the …