Tracking The Flow Of Information Through The Hippocampal Formation In The Rat, 2010 University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston
Tracking The Flow Of Information Through The Hippocampal Formation In The Rat, Joshua P. Neunuebel
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
The hippocampus receives input from upper levels of the association cortex and is implicated in many mnemonic processes, but the exact mechanisms by which it codes and stores information is an unresolved topic. This work examines the flow of information through the hippocampal formation while attempting to determine the computations that each of the hippocampal subfields performs in learning and memory. The formation, storage, and recall of hippocampal-dependent memories theoretically utilize an autoassociative attractor network that functions by implementing two competitive, yet complementary, processes. Pattern separation, hypothesized to occur in the dentate gyrus (DG), refers to the ability to decrease …
Characterization Of Neuronal Groups Regulating Sexual And Agonistic Behavior In Male Chicken (Gallus Gallus), 2010 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Characterization Of Neuronal Groups Regulating Sexual And Agonistic Behavior In Male Chicken (Gallus Gallus), Jingjing Xie
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The study aimed to understand the neuronal regulation of male sexual and agonistic behavior in broiler breeders. First, brain structures associated with sexual and agonistic behavior were identified by mapping Fos expression. The ventromedial subnucleus of medial portion of bed nucleus of the stria teriminalis (BSTM2) was specifically activated by male courtship behavior. The medial preoptic nucleus (POM) and lateral septum (SL) were associated with both sexual and agonistic behaviors. The bed nucleus of the pallial commissure (NCPa) and the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) were closely related to stress. Second, Fos-ir neurons were phenotyped by double labeling Fos with aromatase (ARO) …
Mental Blocks: The Behavioural Effects And Neural Encoding Of Obstacles When Reaching And Grasping, 2010 University of Western Ontario
Mental Blocks: The Behavioural Effects And Neural Encoding Of Obstacles When Reaching And Grasping, Craig S. Chapman
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The ability to adeptly interact with a cluttered and dynamic world requires that the brain simultaneously encode multiple objects. Theoretical frameworks of selective visuomotor attention provide evidence for parallel encoding (Baldauf & Deubel, 2010; Cisek & Kalaska, 2010; Duncan, 2006) where concurrent object processing results in neural competition. Since the end goal of object representation is usually action, these frameworks argue that the competitive activity is best characterized as the development of visuomotor biases. While some behavioural and neural evidence has been accumulated in favour of this explanation, one of the most striking, yet deceptively common, demonstrations of this capacity …
When Bad Stress Goes Good: Increased Threat Reactivity Predicts Improved Category Learning Performance, 2010 University of Maine
When Bad Stress Goes Good: Increased Threat Reactivity Predicts Improved Category Learning Performance, Shawn W. Ell, Brandon Cosley, Shannon L. Mccoy
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
The way in which we respond to everyday stressors can have a profound impact on cognitive functioning. Maladaptive stress responses in particular are generally associated with impaired cognitive performance. We argue, however, that the cognitive system mediating task performance is also a critical determinant of the stress-cognition relationship. Consistent with this prediction, we observed that stress reactivity consistent with a maladaptive, threat response differentially predicted performance on two categorization tasks. Increased threat reactivity predicted enhanced performance on an information-integration task (i.e., learning is thought to depend upon a procedural-based memory system), and a (nonsignificant) trend for impaired performance on a …
Alternation Rate In Perceptual Bistability Is Maximal At And Symmetric Around Equi-Dominance, 2010 New York University
Alternation Rate In Perceptual Bistability Is Maximal At And Symmetric Around Equi-Dominance, Rubén Moreno-Bote, Asya Shpiro, John Rinzel, Nava Rubin
Publications and Research
When an ambiguous stimulus is viewed for a prolonged time, perception alternates between the different possible interpretations of the stimulus. The alternations seem haphazard, but closer inspection of their dynamics reveals systematic properties in many bistable phenomena. Parametric manipulations result in gradual changes in the fraction of time a given interpretation dominates perception, often over the entire possible range of zero to one. The mean dominance durations of the competing interpretations can also vary over wide ranges (from less than a second to dozens of seconds or more), but finding systematic relations in how they vary has proven difficult. Following …
Supersizing The Mind: Embodiment, Action And Cognitive Extension, 2010 University of Edinburgh
Supersizing The Mind: Embodiment, Action And Cognitive Extension, Mirko Farina
Mirko Farina
No abstract provided.
Rule-Based Categorization Deficits In Focal Basal Ganglia Lesion And Parkinson’S Disease Patients, 2010 University of Maine
Rule-Based Categorization Deficits In Focal Basal Ganglia Lesion And Parkinson’S Disease Patients, Shawn W. Ell, Andrea Weinstein, Richard Ivry
Psychology Faculty Scholarship
Patients with basal ganglia (BG) pathology are consistently found to be impaired on rule-based category learning tasks in which learning is thought to depend upon the use of an explicit, hypothesis-guided strategy. The factors that influence this impairment remain unclear. Moreover, it remains unknown if the impairments observed in patients with degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) are also observed in those with focal BG lesions. In the present study, we tested patients with either focal BG lesions or PD on two categorization tasks that varied in terms of their demands on selective attention and working memory. Individuals with …
Eye Movement Measures Of Cognitive Control In Children With Tourette Syndrome, 2010 University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston
Eye Movement Measures Of Cognitive Control In Children With Tourette Syndrome, Cameron B. Jeter
Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)
Tourette Syndrome begins in childhood and is characterized by uncontrollable repetitive actions like neck craning or hopping and noises such as sniffing or chirping. Worst in early adolescence, these tics wax and wane in severity and occur in bouts unpredictably, often drawing unwanted attention from bystanders. Making matters worse, over half of children with Tourette Syndrome also suffer from comorbid, or concurrent, disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). These disorders introduce anxious thoughts, impulsivity, inattention, and mood variability that further disrupt children with Tourette Syndrome from focusing and performing well at school and home. …
A Longitudinal Study Of Neurocognitive Deficits And Functional Outcome In Bipolar Disorder, 2010 University of Nevada, Las Vegas
A Longitudinal Study Of Neurocognitive Deficits And Functional Outcome In Bipolar Disorder, Brian D. Leany
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
Bipolar disorder is an affective disorder that, in addition to being characterized by depressive and expansive mood symptoms, often presents with neuropsychological deficits. Bipolar disorder not only impairs an individual’s cognitive abilities, but these cognitive impairments may also impact day-to-day activities causing functional impairment. In other psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, it has been shown that the neuropsychological deficits are predictive of poor, long term treatment outcome and functioning. However, while bipolar disorder affects nearly 1 - 2% of the U.S. population (Keck, McElroy, & Arnold, 2001), little is known about the extent that neurocognitive deficits may play in the …
The Effects Of Handedness And Bilateral Saccadic Eye Movements On False Alarms In Recognition Memory, 2010 Macalester College
The Effects Of Handedness And Bilateral Saccadic Eye Movements On False Alarms In Recognition Memory, Lisa Weinberg
Psychology Honors Projects
Handedness can be used as a marker for interhemispheric interaction, which can produce memory benefits. Bilateral saccadic eye movements can be used to manipulate levels of interhemispheric interaction. This study measured the effects of handedness and bilateral saccadic eye movement on memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. This study predicted a memory advantage for left-handers and mixed-handers without eye movements and an advantage for right-handers with the eye movements. The results do not support these predictions but do suggest that handedness is a factor in episodic memory performance. The analyses for this study were run using A’ to compare false alarm …
Locus Of Control And The Age Difference In Free Recall From Episodic Memory, 2010 Montclair State University
Locus Of Control And The Age Difference In Free Recall From Episodic Memory, Paul Amrhein, Judith K. Bond, Derek Hamilton
Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works
The authors investigated the relation of locus of control (LOC) to age differences in free-recall memory performance. Older and younger participants completed P. C. Duttweiler's (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) and subsequently performed free-recall memory tasks. Compared with the younger participants, the older participants exhibited poorer recall with more intrusions and uncorrected repetition errors as well as reduced categorical clustering. For the older participants with less internal LOC, recall proportion and item-pair associative recall clustering were lower than for the older participants with more internal LOC. By contrast, the younger participants did not exhibit any LOC effects in their recall …
Does Food Color Influence Taste And Flavor Perception In Humans?, 2010 Occidental College
Does Food Color Influence Taste And Flavor Perception In Humans?, Charles Spence, Carmel Levitan, Maya Shankar, Massimiliano Zampini
Carmel Levitan
In this paper, we review the empirical literature concerning the important question of whether or not food color influences taste and flavor perception in humans. Although a superficial reading of the literature on this topic would appear to give a somewhat mixed answer, we argue that this is, at least in part, due to the fact that many researchers have failed to distinguish between two qualitatively distinct research questions. The first concerns the role that food coloring plays in the perception of the intensity of a particular flavor (e.g., strawberry, banana, etc.) or taste attribute (e.g., sweetness, saltiness, etc.). The …
Effects Of Socioeconomic Status On Brain Development, And How Cognitive Neuroscience May Contribute To Levelling The Playing Field, 2010 Dartmouth College
Effects Of Socioeconomic Status On Brain Development, And How Cognitive Neuroscience May Contribute To Levelling The Playing Field, Rajeev Raizada, Mark M. Kishiyama
Dartmouth Scholarship
The study of socioeconomic status (SES) and the brain finds itself in a circumstance unusual for Cognitive Neuroscience: large numbers of questions with both practical and scientific importance exist, but they are currently under-researched and ripe for investigation. This review aims to highlight these questions, to outline their potential significance, and to suggest routes by which they might be approached. Although remarkably few neural studies have been carried out so far, there exists a large literature of previous behavioural work. This behavioural research provides an invaluable guide for future neuroimaging work, but also poses an important challenge for it: how …
The Effects Of Testosterone On Emotional Processing In Male Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca Mulatta), 2010 University of Massachusetts Amherst
The Effects Of Testosterone On Emotional Processing In Male Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca Mulatta), Hanna M. King
Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014
The effects of testosterone (T) extend beyond reproductive behavior to the areas of cognitive and emotional functioning. While T effects on cognition have been extensively investigated, less is known about the role of T in the processing of emotional stimuli. Considering the role that T plays in aggressive behavior and dominance status, it is of particular interest to determine whether T modulates the processing of social threat. Due to their similarities to humans in brain organization, reproductive endocrinology and affective regulation, rhesus monkeys (macaca mulatta) provide an excellent model to investigate this relationship. In a within-subjects design, six male rhesus …
Perception Of Emotion In Sounded And Imagined Music, 2010 Bucknell University
Perception Of Emotion In Sounded And Imagined Music, B.L. Lucas, E. Schubert, Andrea Halpern
Faculty Journal Articles
WE STUDIED THE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES BY MUSICIANS to familiar classical music excerpts both when the music was sounded, and when it was imagined.We used continuous response methodology to record response profiles for the dimensions of valence and arousal simultaneously and then on the single dimension of emotionality. The response profiles were compared using cross-correlation analysis, and an analysis of responses to musical feature turning points, which isolate instances of change in musical features thought to influence valence and arousal responses. We found strong similarity between the use of an emotionality arousal scale across the stimuli, regardless of condition (imagined …
Mental Reversal Of Imagined Melodies: A Role For The Posterior Parietal Cortex, 2010 Bucknell University
Mental Reversal Of Imagined Melodies: A Role For The Posterior Parietal Cortex, R.J. Zatorre, Andrea Halpern, M. Bouffard
Faculty Journal Articles
Two fMRI experiments explored the neural substrates of a musical imagery task that required manipulation of the imagined sounds: temporal reversal of a melody. Musicians were presented with the first few notes of a familiar tune (Experiment 1) or its title (Experiment 2), followed by a string of notes that was either an exact or an inexact reversal. The task was to judge whether the second string was correct or not by mentally reversing all its notes, thus requiring both maintenance and manipulation of the represented string. Both experiments showed considerable activation of the superior parietal lobe (intraparietal sulcus) during …
Memory For Melodies, 2010 Bucknell University
Memory For Melodies, Andrea Halpern, J.C. Bartlett
Faculty Contributions to Books
No abstract provided.
Amygdala And Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Responses To Appearance-Based And Behavior-Based Person Impressions., 2009 Kenyon College
Amygdala And Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Responses To Appearance-Based And Behavior-Based Person Impressions., Sean Baron, M Gobinni, Andrew Engell, Alex Todorov
Andrew Engell
Distributed Representations Of Dynamic Facial Expressions In The Superior Temporal Sulcus., 2009 Kenyon College
Distributed Representations Of Dynamic Facial Expressions In The Superior Temporal Sulcus., Chris Said, Chris Moore, Andrew Engell, Alex Todroov, James Haxby
Andrew Engell
Influence Of Perinatal Exposure To A Polychlorinated Biphenyl Mixture On Learning And Memory, Hippocampal Size, And Estrogen Receptor-Beta Expression, 2009 Bowling Green State University
Influence Of Perinatal Exposure To A Polychlorinated Biphenyl Mixture On Learning And Memory, Hippocampal Size, And Estrogen Receptor-Beta Expression, Howard Cromwell
Howard Casey Cromwell
Abstract. Perinatal exposure to PCB has been reported to cause a variety of health effects including endocrine disruption, and immunologic, reproductive, neurologic, and behavioral deficits. In the present study, a mixture of two PCB congeners, one non-coplanar (PCB 47) and one coplanar (PCB 77), were administered to young female Sprague-Dawley rats by route of maternal dietary consumption (either 12.5 ppm or 25.0 ppm, w/w). Impact on learning and memory were examined by radial arm maze on postnatal day 24-27. After behavioral tests were completed, the rats were transcardially perfused, and brains were excised. Immunohistochemistry for ER- β was carried out …