Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

Historical Trauma Response Scores As A Function Of Unresolved Grief And Substance Use Disorder In American Indian Populations, Andrew R. Saunders

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Abstract

Researchers are interested in the outcomes of interventions, specifically, measuring historical trauma (HT) among American Indian/Alaska Native communities and the long-term distress and substance abuse as a result of historical trauma response (HTR). Previous literature has implicated limitations in the clinical conceptualization of the relationship between intergenerational transfer of HTR and substance abuse. The aim of the current study is to examine treatment efficacy of 50 homosexual, American Indian males randomized to a culturally-adapted juxtaposition of (1) Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), (2) Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and (3) Historical Trauma and Unresolved Grief Intervention (HTUG), or (4) waitlisted on …

Sex Moderates The Relationship That Number Of Professional Fights Has With Cognition And Brain Volumes, Lauren L. Bennett, Steve J. Stephen, Charles Bernick, Guogen Shan, Sarah J. Banks

School of Public Health Faculty Research

Objective: Incidence of concussions and report of symptoms are greater among women across sports. While structural brain changes and cognitive declines are associated with repetitive head impact (RHI), the role of sex is not well-understood. This study aimed to determine if there is a moderating effect of sex on the relationship the number of professional fights has with cognitive functioning and regional brain volumes in a cohort of boxers, mixed martial artists, and martial artists. Methods: A total of 55 women were matched with 55 men based on age, years of education, ethnicity, and fighting style. Cognition was assessed via …

An Acute Application Of Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Does Not Improve Motor Performance In Parkinson’S Disease, Lidio Lima De Albuquerque, Milan Pantovic, Mitchel Clingo, Katherine Fischer, Sharon Jalene, Merrill Landers, Zoltan Mari, Brach Poston

Integrated Health Sciences Faculty Research

Transcranial direct current stimulation of the cerebellum (c-tDCS) improves motor performance in young and old adults. Based on the cerebellar involvement in Parkinson’s disease (PD), c-tDCS could have potential to improve motor function in PD. The purpose was to determine the effects of c-tDCS on motor performance in PD while participants were on medications. The study was a randomized, double-blind, SHAM-controlled, between-subjects design. Twenty-two participants with PD were allocated to either a c-tDCS group or a SHAM group. All participants completed one experimental session and performed two motor tasks with their most affected hand in a Baseline condition (no stimulation) …

Modeling Self-Organization In Human Crowds, Trenton D. Wirth

Link Foundation Modeling, Simulation and Training Fellowship Reports

Developing an understanding of human crowd movement is critical for optimizing crowd safety, both on the streets and in buildings. It is well understood from the study of animal collective motion that individuals are better able coordinate and respond to perturbations by perceiving movements from their neighbors (Ballerini et al., 2008; Couzin & Krause, 2003; Partridge, 1982). Thus, modeling and simulating human crowd behavior depends on the modeler’s ability to accurately characterize how an individual is influenced by his or her neighbors (Ballerini et al., 2008); i.e., identifying the local rules of engagement that lead to self-organization (Rio et al., …

Optimal Control Of Excitable Systems Near Criticality, Kathleen Finlinson, Woodrow L. Shew, Danile B. Larremore, Juan G. Restrepo

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Experiments suggest that the cerebral cortex gains several functional advantages by operating in a dynamical regime near the critical point of a phase transition. However, a long-standing criticism of this hypothesis is that critical dynamics are rather noisy, which might be detrimental to aspects of brain function that require precision. If the cortex does operate near criticality, how might it mitigate the noisy fluctuations? One possibility is that other parts of the brain may act to control the fluctuations and reduce cortical noise. To better understand basic aspects of controlling neural activity fluctuations, here we numerically and analytically study a …

Sex/Gender Differences In Serial Position Profiles In Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment And Healthy Controls, Emnet Z. Gammada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Introduction: Alzheimer’s disease disproportionately affects more women, but paradoxically, men have a higher incidence of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Researchers have suggested that women’s verbal memory advantage across the lifespan reflects better premorbid skills, which then require more neurodegeneration to manifest early clinical impairment. To date, measurement of sex differences in verbal memory have used total list scores. We proposed that a granular examination of serial position effects (SPE) in list-learning can refine the source of sex/gender differences.

Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of participants with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Healthy Controls (HC) was examined from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging …

Structural And Functional Brain Markers Of Trauma-Related Symptoms, Glenn Blessington

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The neurocircuitry model of posttraumatic stress disorder suggests an association between trauma-related symptoms and abnormalities in the structure and function of limbic and prefrontal brain regions. Evidence also suggests that these structural and functional abnormalities are related. We tested the relation between whole brain white matter integrity, resting-state functional connectivity of a fronto-limbic network, and trauma-related symptoms in 22 trauma-exposed women. We hypothesized that components of whole brain white matter would correlate with components of resting connectivity within a fronto-limbic network. We used parallel independent component analysis (pICA) to test the associations between whole brain fractional anisotropy (FA) maps and …

The Cognitive Thalamus: Source Analysis Of Scene Working Memory Delay Activity, Bernard A. Gomes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Working Memory represents a limited-capacity store for maintaining information and manipulating the store's contents over a short period for the guidance of goal-directed behavior. Working Memory is an essential component of executive functions that are intricately associated with the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC has been implicated in maintaining task-related information online for brief periods in the absence of relevant information. This active maintenance phase is called the delay period that occurs between encoding and retrieval of the stimulus. Previous studies have attempted to understand the relationship between working memory and the PFC, especially during the delay or maintenance phase …

Investigating The Neural Mechanisms Of Unconscious And Illusory Touch Perception, Lua Koenig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite our everyday reliance on touch, from manipulating tools to dressing ourselves, relatively little is known about the neural correlates of tactile perception. As with other modalities, our conscious, reportable experiences of touch can dissociate from the physical tactile stimulation processed by the skin. In unconscious touch perception, tactile stimuli can be processed and guide our behavior without an accompanying conscious percept. For example, we may swat away a mosquito without having consciously registered its presence on our skin. In tactile illusions, conscious tactile experiences occur without a corresponding tactile stimulus. Multisensory tactile illusions arise when stimulation of a different …

A Glance At The Mirror: Ensemble Perception Of Symmetry, Gene Jerskey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A growing body of research has demonstrated the ability of subjects to extract representative statistics from visual ensembles, images of similar but distinct groups of objects, without conscious effort or attention focused on individual members of the ensemble. When presented with ensembles, subjects have been able to accurately report the mean, range, and even distribution of various features in the ensemble. Research into ensemble perception, as it has become known, has divided mainly into studies of either low-level features, such as orientation, motion, and color, which are processed in early visual areas, at least for individual objects, or high-level features, …

The Temporal Dynamics Of Ensemble Perception, Michael L. Epstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The striking disparity between the subjective richness of experience and the considerable limitations of perceptual processing has emerged as an essential, enduring question in both vision science and philosophy of mind. A potential solution to this issue is ensemble perception: the ability for the visual system to compute the statistical summaries of object groups, effectively compressing an otherwise overwhelming amount of information. Previous work has supported that ensemble statistics can be perceived quickly and accurately for a wide range of object features. This has motivated models of ensemble perception as an early process in vision, providing an initial sense of …

Rehabilitative Movement Approaches And Dance Interventions In Parkinson’S Disease, Cecilia Fontanesi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The scope of this work is to address the functional deficits and symptoms experienced by those living with Parkinson’s Disease through movement interventions.

Chapter 1 offers a brief overview of current pharmacotherapy and rehabilitation approaches in Parkinson’s, focusing on dance in particular as a movement intervention that may be particularly suited to this population.

Chapter 2 focuses on brain plasticity and motor learning in PD, reporting the effects of rTMS applied after the acquisition of a motor skill. In this study, adaptation tested in patients with PD was comparable in the sham and TMS sessions, while retention indices tested on …

Comparison Of Longitudinal Changes In Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Between Alzheimer’S And Healthy Controls, Berk Can Yilmaz

Theses

Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rs-fMRI) is a technique that is widely used for analyzing brain function using different approaches and methods. This study involves rs-fMRI analysis of Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signals acquired from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) Patients and Healthy Controls (HC). Each subject in the study had both functional and anatomical images with at least one rs-fMRI scan with their Anatomical (T1) scans. Previous rs-fMRI studies have demonstrated that AD shows differences in Amplitude of Low Frequency (<0.1 Hz) Fluctuations (ALFF), and Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) measures according to HCs.

The aim of the study is to investigate individual and group level differences using ReHo and mALFF related …

Optimization And Validation Of A Modified Radial-Arm Water Maze Protocol Using A Murine Model Of Mild Closed Head Traumatic Brain Injury, Teresa Macheda, Kelly N. Roberts, Josh M. Morganti, David J. Braun, Adam D. Bachstetter

Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center Faculty Publications

Cognitive impairments can be a significant problem after a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which affects millions worldwide each year. There is a need for establish reproducible cognitive assays in rodents to better understand disease mechanisms and to develop therapeutic interventions towards treating TBI-induced impairments. Our goal was to validate and standardize the radial arm water maze (RAWM) test as an assay to screen for cognitive impairments caused by TBI. RAWM is a visuo-spatial learning test, originally designed for use with rats, and later adapted for mice. The present study investigates whether test procedures, such us the presence of extra-maze cues …

Preliminary Evidence Of The Role Of Medial Prefrontal Cortex In Self-Enhancement: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study, Birgitta Taylor-Lillquist, Vivek Kanpa, Maya Crawford, Mehdi El Filali, Julia Oakes, Alex Jonasz, Amanda Disney, Julian Keenan

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Humans employ a number of strategies to improve their position in their given social hierarchy. Overclaiming involves presenting oneself as having more knowledge than one actually possesses, and it is typically invoked to increase one’s social standing. If increased expectations to possess knowledge is a perceived social pressure, such expectations should increase bouts of overclaiming. As the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) is sensitive to social pressure and disruption of the MPFC leads to decreases in overclaiming, we predicted that transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) applied to the MPFC would reduce overclaiming and the effects would be enhanced in the presence of …

Brainwaves And Intentions: The Readiness Potential And Its Relation To Free Will, Joanna Pak, Aaron Schurger, Adina Roskies, Pengbo Hu

SURF Posters and Papers

First discovered in 1965 by Kornhuber and Deecke, the readiness potential (RP) is a distinctive buildup of neural activity in motor areas of the brain that begins ~500 ms before voluntary movements. In 1983, Libet used the RP as the foundation for his argument against the existence of conscious free will. This argument became known as the classic model of the RP, which interprets the RP as a precursor to the conscious experience of volition and a quantifiable representation of unconscious brain activity preceding spontaneous movements. Although the classic model connected the RP to free will, the significance of the …

Nutraceutical Potential For Alzheimer's Disease Treatment, Alex Gewecke

Undergraduate Research Journal

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive disorder involving buildup of excessive amounts of proteins such as beta amyloid in the brain that leads to memory loss, inability to perform daily functions, and an early death. By 2060, the number of cases is forecast to nearly triple current numbers. Age is the primary risk factor for AD and no new drugs have been approved since 2003. Nutraceuticals, a broad category of substances that can be utilized for both medicinal and nutritional purposes may be able to help, which is why they are being more widely researched. Overall, a number of attempts …

Consider The Agent In The Arthropod, Nicolas Delon, Peter Cook, Gordon Bauer, Heidi Harley

Animal Sentience

Whether or not arthropods are sentient, they can have moral standing. Appeals to sentience are not necessary and retard progress in human treatment of other species, including invertebrates. Other increasingly well-documented aspects of invertebrate minds are pertinent to their welfare. Even if arthropods are not sentient, they can be agents whose goals—and therefore interests—can be frustrated. This kind of agency is sufficient for moral status and requires that we consider their welfare.

What Kind Of An Illusion Is The Illusion Of Self, Karsten J. Struhl

Comparative Philosophy

Both early and later forms of Buddhism developed a set of arguments to demonstrate that the self is an illusion. This article begins with a brief review of some of the arguments but then proceeds to show that these arguments are not themselves sufficient to dispel the illusion. It analyzes three ways in which the illusion of self manifests itself – as wish fulfillment, as a cognitive illusion, and as a phenomenal illusion (what might be called the “I” sense). With respect to this last, the article reviews some recent developments in cognitive neuropsychology and neuroscience to discuss the way …

Variations In Slow-Wave Eeg And Working Memory Deficits During Letter Number Sequencing Task Post-Concussion, Morgan Sotoloff

Neuroscience Presentations

Concussions are associated with various types of consequences, both short-term and long-term: ranging from acute symptomatology, resting protocols, return-to-play decisions, and the lingering effects that have been found to have significant impacts on cognitive processes and function in many individuals several months post-concussion. Previous research has demonstrated that certain dimensions of executive function are especially susceptible to mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), specifically working memory and attention. Studies that have previously utilized electroencephalography (EEG), have found that increased very low frequency oscillations (VLFO) are associated with a disruption of goal-oriented activities, difficulties in cognition, hyperactivity, and inattention in concussed individuals …