Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

The Power Of Prayer, Victoria Dawn Thompson

Capstone Collection

If words are arbitrary, how does prayer have power?” is the question of inquiry in this paper. An unobtrusive Content Analysis inquiry methodology was used to answer this question. The answer lies in the finding that words and thoughts are not the same thing, and our thoughts expand beyond the audible and visible. The implication for professional practice these findings present is that a deeper awareness of “Self” is needed to understand people’s miraculous way of resolving conflict via prayer.

The Role Of Bdnf Expression In Chronic Ethanol Usage, Caleb Porter, Scott Steffensen

Journal of Undergraduate Research

It has been observed that chronic exposure to drugs of abuse, particularly opiates, increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels in ventral tegmental area (VTA) neurons. In particular, BDNF expression is dramatically increased during drug withdrawal, which would suggest a direct connection between the aversive state of withdrawal and BDNFinduced neuronal plasticity. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the relationship between brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression, which is dramatically increased within the ventral tegmental area (VTA) during drug abuse, and alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

Role Of Exercise And Stress In Memory And Learning Of The Hippocampus, Paul Baker, Jeff Edwards

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Some of the most devastating diseases today are diseases of the mind. Common side effects of Alzheimer’s disease are dementia and memory loss and more than 44 million people suffer from the disease worldwide [1]. Other mental diseases such as Parkinson’s also have a dramatic impact on the memory and learning pathways. Understanding the mechanism involved with memory and learning will bring science that much closer to finding a permanent cure to these devastating diseases.

Effects Of Sleep-Deprivation On Decision-Making And Action Selection, Shalin N. Shah

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis addresses neuroscience research focusing on the brain’s mechanisms underlying behavioral choice, or prioritization, and decision-making. The research has been conducted with Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit fly – a good model from both the behavioral and neural perspectives. This project specifically observes the co-regulation of sleep with two other behaviors – courtship and oviposition. The overlap between the sleep and courtship circuits in the brain should provide a good model for behavioral prioritization, and the interaction between sleep and ovipositional preference should provide a model for understanding the effects of sleep on decision-making. All three of these adaptive behaviors …

Examining The Neuronal Dopaminergic Pathway Underlying Sleep Behavior And Related Dopamine Sleep Disorders, Mary Beth Putz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The human brain is an extremely complex organ with approximately 100 billion different neurons that are constantly sending and receiving messages. These messages are sent using the chemical messengers of the brain: neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. Mechanisms of neural control of sleep are substantially conserved across species. Evidence from multiple animal models including flies, zebrafish, and mice shows that the arousal, or wake phase, is regulated by conserved neuromodulators such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Since these neurotransmitter systems are distributed throughout the brain and sub-serve many functions in addition to sleep, the precise circuit mechanisms by which these neurotransmitters regulate …

Mindfulness And Law Enforcement: An Effective Approach To Implementing Mindfulness For First Responders, Gina White

Mindfulness Studies Theses

An increasing number of studies show that people employed as first responders in high trauma service jobs tend to experience a high level of stress, at work and after hours. Studies suggest that constant exposure to job related stress leads to both physical and mental dysregulation. This study looks at the effects of implementing mindfulness tools and techniques to those working in law enforcement. Other works on this topic report mindfulness as a successful tool to increase wellbeing to a broad spectrum of populations. The methodology used in this study was designed specifically for first responders. The data findings were …

Balanced Excitation And Inhibition Shapes The Dynamics Of A Neuronal Network For Movement And Reward, Anca R. Radulescu

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

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.

Predicting Fixations From Deep And Low-Level Features, Matthias Kümmerer, Thomas S.A. Wallis, Leon A. Gatys, Matthias Bethge

MODVIS Workshop

Learning what properties of an image are associated with human gaze placement is important both for understanding how biological systems explore the environment and for computer vision applications. Recent advances in deep learning for the first time enable us to explain a significant portion of the information expressed in the spatial fixation structure. Our saliency model DeepGaze II uses the VGG network (trained on object recognition in the ImageNet challenge) to convert an image into a high-dimensional feature space which is then readout by a second very simple network to yield a density prediction. DeepGaze II is right now the …

Applying Fmri Complexity Analyses To The Single-Subject: A Case Study For Proposed Neurodiagnostics, Anca R. Radulescu, Emily R. Hannon

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Noisy Neural Oscillators With Intrinsic And Network Heterogeneity, Kyle P. Wendling, Cheng Ly

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

An Interdisciplinary Approach To Computational Neurostimulation, Madison Guitard

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

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 …

Neural Computation Of Statistical Image Properties In Peripheral Vision, Christoph Zetzsche, Ruth Rosenholtz, Noshaba Cheema, Konrad Gadzicki, Lex Fridman

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

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 …

Using Classification Images To Understand Models Of Lightness Perception, Minjung Kim, Jason M. Gold, Richard F. Murray

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Edge Integration And Image Segmentation In Lightness And Color: Computational And Neural Theory, Michael E. Rudd

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Modeling Accommodation Control Of The Human Eye: Chromatic Aberration And Color Opponency, Agostino Gibaldi, Steven A. Cholewiak, Marty S. Banks

MODVIS Workshop

Accommodation is the process by which the eye lens changes optical power to maintain a clear retinal image as the distance to the fixated object varies. Although luminance blur has long been considered the driving feature for accommodation, it is by definition unsigned (i.e., there is no difference between the defocus of an object closer or farther than the focus distance). Nonetheless, the visual system initially accommodates in the correct direction, implying that it exploits a cue with sign information. Here, we present a model of accommodation control based on such a cue: Longitudinal Chromatic Aberration (LCA). The model relies …

Can Cone Signals In The Wild Be Predicted From The Past?, David H. Foster, Iván Marín-Franch

MODVIS Workshop

In the natural world, the past is usually a good guide to the future. If light from the sun and sky is blue earlier in the day and yellow now, then it is likely to be more yellow later, as the sun's elevation decreases. But is the light reflected from a scene into the eye as predictable as the light incident upon the scene, especially when lighting changes are not just spectral but include changes in local shadows and mutual reflections? The aim of this work was to test the predictability of cone photoreceptor signals in the wild over the …

Role Of The Cost Of Plasticity In Determining The Features Of Fast Vision In Humans., Maria M. Del Viva Phd, Renato Budinich M. Sc, Laura Palmieri M. Sc, Vladimir S Georgiev Phd, Giovanni Punzi Phd

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.