Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

Age Drives Distortion Of Brain Metabolic, Vascular And Cognitive Functions, And The Gut Microbiome, Jared D. Hoffman, Ishita Parikh, Stefan J. Green, George Chlipala, Robert P. Mohney, Mignon Keaton, Bjoern Bauer, Anika M. S. Hartz, Ai-Ling Lin

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Advancing age is the top risk factor for the development of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, the contribution of aging processes to AD etiology remains unclear. Emerging evidence shows that reduced brain metabolic and vascular functions occur decades before the onset of cognitive impairments, and these reductions are highly associated with low-grade, chronic inflammation developed in the brain over time. Interestingly, recent findings suggest that the gut microbiota may also play a critical role in modulating immune responses in the brain via the brain-gut axis. In this study, our goal was to identify associations between deleterious changes in …

The Inconvenient Truth About Thinking Chickens, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Original Abstract: Domestic chickens are members of an order, Aves, which has been the focus of a revolution in our understanding of neuroanatomical, cognitive, and social complexity. Some birds are now known to be on a par with many mammals in their intelligence, emotional sophistication, and social interaction. Yet views of chickens have largely remained unrevised in light of this new evidence. In this paper, I examine the data on cognition, emotions, personality, and sociality in chickens, exploring such areas as self-awareness, cognitive bias, social learning and self-control, and comparing their abilities with other birds and other vertebrates, particularly …

Combined Mnemonic Strategy Training And High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation For Memory Deficits In Mild Cognitive Impairment, Benjamin M. Hampstead, Krishnankutty Sathian, Marom Bikson, Anthony Y. Stringer

Publications and Research

Introduction: Memory deficits characterize Alzheimer’s dementia and the clinical precursor stage known as mild cognitive impairment. Nonpharmacologic interventions hold promise for enhancing functioning in these patients, potentially delaying functional impairment that denotes transition to dementia. Previous findings revealed that mnemonic strategy training (MST) enhances long-term retention of trained stimuli and is accompanied by increased blood oxygen level–dependent signal in the lateral frontal and parietal cortices as well as in the hippocampus. The present study was designed to enhance MST generalization, and the range of patients who benefit, via concurrent delivery of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Methods: This protocol describes …

The Interaction Of Temporal And Spectral Acoustic Information With Word Predictability On Speech Intelligibility, Bahar Somayeh Shahsavarani

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

High-level, top-down information such as linguistic knowledge is a salient cortical resource that influences speech perception under most listening conditions. But, are all listeners able to exploit these resources for speech facilitation to the same extent? It was found that children with cochlear implants showed different patterns of benefit from contextual information in speech perception compared with their normal-haring peers. Previous studies have discussed the role of non-acoustic factors such as linguistic and cognitive capabilities to account for this discrepancy. Given the fact that the amount of acoustic information encoded and processed by auditory nerves of listeners with cochlear implants …

Cognitive And Neurobiological Degeneration Of The Mental Lexicon In Primary Progressive Aphasia, Jet M. J. Vonk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ease with which we use the thousands of words in our vocabulary stands in stark contrast to our difficulty establishing how they are organized in our mind and brain. The breakdown of language due to cortical atrophy in primary progressive aphasia (PPA) creates conditions to study this organization at a cognitive and neurobiological level in that the three variants of this disease, namely non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic PPA, each bear their own signature of language-specific decline and cortical atrophy. As the impaired regions in each variant are linked to different lexical and semantic attributes of words, lexical decision performance …

The Nucleus Accumbens Core Dopamine D1 And Glutamate Ampa/Nmda Receptors Play A Transient Role In The Performance Of Pavlovian Approach Behavior, Veronica Dobrovitsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The role of the nucleus accumbens core (NAc core) continues to be redefined with newly acquired data on neurochemical mechanisms mediating the learning and performance of behavior. Previous empirical data showed that dopamine transmission at the D1 receptor (D1R) plays a transient role in the expression of learned Pavlovian approach behavior. Here we show that, prior to overtraining, dopamine activity at D1Rs specifically within the NAc core is critical for the performance of approach behavior elicited by the recently-acquired reward-paired cue. Blockade of D1Rs in the NAc core, but not the dorsomedial striatum or NAc shell, disrupted approach responses during …

Ecologies Of Embodied Minds Embedded: Radical Romantic Perspectives On Architectures Of Technology, Sharmaine Browne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores Romantic responses to the role of architectural technologies in the development of material being, consciousness, and culture by applying a critical approach in which I combine radical embodied cognitive theory, ecocritical perspectives, and a phenomenological lens to select Romantic texts written from 1789 to 1884 in response to industrial modernity. While scholarship has thoroughly explored technology as a cultural force which inevitably shapes consciousness, I propose that a slight shift of emphasis from technology’s external influence to the material internalization of its influence allows for new perspectives—particularly in light of recent proposals in cognitive philosophy which assert …

Science Of Learning Network Of Schools: The Science Of Communities Of Practice, Andrew Jones, Frank Vetere

2009 - 2019 ACER Research Conferences

Frameworks referencing synthesised bodies of prominent research adorn education improvement policy like curiously named pieces of Ikea furniture—peculiar in their assemblage, ostensibly contemporary, and striking in their modular convenience. Amid this, most pundits still agree that we have an education advancement issue in this country. Despite significant increases in funding from successive federal and state governments, we simply haven’t been able to shift the needle. What we can ascertain is that compliance-based improvement approaches don’t work. They are unable to influence the cognitive maps, beliefs and understandings of the educator to the extent necessary to effectively improve outcomes for students …

The Effects Of Dance Therapy On Patients With Parkinson’S Disease: An Integrative Literature Review, Jennifer Pence

Grace Peterson Nursing Research Colloquium

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive, degenerative disease of the nervous system that affects more than one million Americans. Individuals who have PD generally exhibit bradykinesia, postural instability, shuffling steps and freezing during gait. These impairments in motor function cannot be fully addressed with pharmacological treatment and can eventually become unresponsive to this form of treatment. Dance therapy, on the other hand, is one non-pharmacological method that may prove beneficial for PD. It utilizes motor planning skills, which can lead to an improvement in muscle flexibility and balance. The purpose of the systematic integrative literature review was to …

A Touchscreen Assay To Probe The Role Of The Serotonergic System In Learning And Visual Information Processing, Jeffrey M. Dorsch, Alexandr Pak, Alexander A. Chubykin

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The neurotransmitter serotonin is involved in numerous processes in the brain such as behavior, learning, memory, mood, and neurodevelopment. Serotonin signaling is regulated by the serotonin transporter protein (SERT), which maintains normal serotonin levels. Mutations in the SERT gene are known to correlate with cognitive and behavioral deficits seen in psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety disorders, depression, and autism spectrum disorder. Researchers study these deficits using SERT knockout (KO) mice, a model that lacks functional SERT and displays changes in anxiety, learning, and motivation. We are interested in how the absence of SERT affects visual processing and learning. A popular …

Investigating The Neural Basis Of Audiovisual Speech Perception With Intracranial Recordings In Humans, Muge O. Sertel

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Speech is inherently multisensory, containing auditory information from the voice and visual information from the mouth movements of the talker. Hearing the voice is usually sufficient to understand speech, however in noisy environments or when audition is impaired due to aging or disabilities, seeing mouth movements greatly improves speech perception. Although behavioral studies have well established this perceptual benefit, it is still not clear how the brain processes visual information from mouth movements to improve speech perception. To clarify this issue, I studied the neural activity recorded from the brain surfaces of human subjects using intracranial electrodes, a technique known …

Deep Long Short-Term Memory Structures Model Temporal Dependencies Improving Cognitive Workload Estimation, Ryan G. Hefron, Brett J. Borghetti, James C. Christensen, Christine M. Schubert Kabban

Faculty Publications

Using deeply recurrent neural networks to account for temporal dependence in electroencephalograph (EEG)-based workload estimation is shown to considerably improve day-to-day feature stationarity resulting in significantly higher accuracy (p < .0001) than classifiers which do not consider the temporal dependence encoded within the EEG time-series signal. This improvement is demonstrated by training several deep Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) models including Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architectures, a feedforward Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) models on data from six participants who each perform several Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB) sessions on five separate days spread out over a month-long period. Each participant-specific classifier is trained on the first four days of data and tested using the fifth’s. Average classification accuracy of 93.0% is achieved using a deep LSTM architecture. These results represent a 59% decrease in error compared to the best previously published results for this dataset. This study additionally evaluates the significance of new features: all combinations of mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis of EEG frequency-domain power distributions. Mean and variance are statistically significant features, while skewness and kurtosis are not. The overall performance of this approach is high enough to warrant evaluation for inclusion in operational systems.

Engaging Narratives Evoke Similar Neural Activity And Lead To Similar Time Perception, Samantha S. Cohen, Simon Henin, Lucas C. Parra

Publications and Research

It is said that we lose track of time - that “time flies” - when we are engrossed in a story. How does engagement with the story cause this distorted perception of time, and what are its neural correlates? People commit both time and attentional resources to an engaging stimulus. For narrative videos, attentional engagement can be represented as the level of similarity between the electroencephalographic responses of different viewers. Here we show that this measure of neural engagement predicted the duration of time that viewers were willing to commit to narrative videos. Contrary to popular wisdom, engagement did not …

Effects Of Language Immersion Versus Classroom Exposure On Advanced French Learners: An Erp Study, Alexandra Claire Brito

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

University students often report making significant advances in their second language (L2) ability after immersion in a nonnative language through study abroad. The degree to which late L2 learners can become nativelike in terms of L2 performance and brain processing is unclear in second language acquisition research. The link between L2 proficiency and learning context has been characterized in previous research, yet the role of learning experience in attaining nativelike brain processing of L2 remains to be elucidated. This study contrasts learners with advanced French proficiency who have attained this level with no, little, or more immersion experience through study …

Between Speech & Song: Clarifying The Sprechstimme Of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, Sara M. Paar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since its creation, the technique of Sprechstimme has fascinated the audiences, performers, and composers of twentieth century music. What is it? How is it done? How should it be notated? At the fore of investigations into these questions has been Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, the work in which Schoenberg debuted this new technique. Much has been written in regard to Schoenberg’s creation and use of Sprechstimme, as well as his own exploration of the speech/song continuum. Composers, conductors, and performers have all tried to make sense of the notation, instructions, and performances Schoenberg left behind. Despite this, confusion, …

Label-Free Fluorescence Spectroscopy For Detecting Key Biomolecules In Brain Tissue From A Mouse Model Of Alzheimer’S Disease, Lingyan Shi, Luyao Lu, George Harvey, Thomas Harvey, Adrián Rodríguez-Contreras, Robert R. Alfano

Publications and Research

In this study, label-free fluorescence spectroscopy was used for the first time to determine spectral profiles of tryptophan, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), and flavin denine dinucleotide (FAD) in fresh brain samples of a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Our results showed that the emission spectral profile levels of tryptophan and NADH were higher in AD samples than normal samples. The intensity ratio of tryptophan to NADH and the change rate of fluorescence intensity with respect to wavelength also increased in AD brain. These results yield an optical method for detecting early stage of AD by comparing spectral profiles …

Cortico-Striatal Coordination Disrupted In Behaviorally Inflexible Moderate Prenatal Alcohol Exposed Mice, Kristin L. Marquardt

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

Up to 61% of adolescent school aged children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) have been suspended or expelled. Executive function deficits, like dis-inhibition and cognitive inflexibility, have been proposed to be better predictors of behavioral problems then IQ score, which qualifies these individuals for developmental disability and special school programs. Reversal learning, a widely used behavioral paradigm for assessing cognitive flexibility across species, has been shown to be impaired in rodent models of prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE). Here we show that a mouse model with daily maternal drinking, resulting in a BAC of 85 mg/dl throughout gestation, results in …

Central And Peripheral Difference In Perceptual Bias In Ambiguous Perception Using Dichoptic Stimuli --- Implications For The Analysis-By-Synthesis Process In Visual Recognition, Li Zhaoping Prof

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Mapping The Spatio-Temporal Dynamics Of Vision In The Human Brain, Aude Oliva

MODVIS Workshop

Recognition of objects and scenes is a fundamental function of the human brain, necessitating a complex neural machinery that transforms low level visual information into semantic content. Despite significant advances in characterizing the locus and function of key visual areas, integrating the temporal and spatial dynamics of this processing stream has posed a decades-long challenge to human neuroscience. In this talk I will describe a brain mapping approach to combine magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional MRI (fMRI) measurements, and convolutional neural networks (CNN) by representational similarity analysis to yield a spatially and temporally integrated characterization of neuronal representations when observers perceive visual …

Similarity-Based Fusion Of Meg And Fmri Discerns Early Feedforward And Feedback Processing In The Ventral Stream, Yalda Mohsenzadeh Dr., Radoslaw Martin Cichy Dr., Aude Oliva Dr., Dimitrios Pantazis Dr.

MODVIS Workshop

Successful models of vision, such as DNNs and HMAX, are inspired by the human visual system, relying on a hierarchical cascade of feedforward transformations akin to the ventral stream. Despite these advances, the human visual cortex remains unique in complexity, with feedforward and feedback pathways characterized by rapid spatiotemporal dynamics as visual information is transformed into semantic content. Thus, a systematic characterization of the spatiotemporal and representational space of the ventral visual pathway can offer novel insights in the duration and sequencing of cognitive processes, suggesting computational constraints and new architectures for computer vision models.

To discern the feedforward and …