Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Psychostimulants As Cognitive Enhancers: The Prefrontal Cortex, Catecholamines And Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Craig Berridge, David M. Devilbiss

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Departmental Research

Psychostimulants exert behavioral-calming and cognition-enhancing actions in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Contrary to early views, extensive research demonstrates that these actions are not unique to ADHD. Specifically, when administered at low and clinically-relevant doses, psychostimulants improve a variety of behavioral and cognitive processes dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in subjects with and without ADHD. Despite the longstanding clinical use of these drugs, the neural mechanisms underlying their cognition-enhancing/therapeutic actions have only recently begun to be examined. At behaviorally-activating doses, psychostimulants produce large and widespread increases in extracellular levels of brain catecholamines. In contrast, cognition-enhancing doses …

Adaptive Significance Of Natural Variations In Maternal Care In Rats: A Translational Perspective, Annaliese K. Beery, Darlene D. Francis

Neuroscience: Faculty Publications

A wealth of data from the last fifty years documents the potency of early life experiences including maternal care on developing offspring. A majority of this research has focused on the developing stress axis and stress-sensitive behaviors in hopes of identifying factors impacting resilience and risk-sensitivity. The power of early life experience to shape later development is profound and has the potential to increase fitness of individuals for their environments. Current findings in a rat maternal care paradigm highlight the complex and dynamic relation between early experiences and a variety of outcomes. In this review we propose adaptive hypotheses for …

Pulsed Out Of Awareness: Eeg Alpha Oscillations Represent A Pulsed-Inhibition Of Ongoing Cortical Processing, Kyle E. Mathewson, Alejandro Lleras, Diane M. Beck, Monica Fabiani, Tony Ro, Gabriele Gratton

Publications and Research

Alpha oscillations are ubiquitous in the brain, but their role in cortical processing remains a matter of debate. Recently, evidence has begun to accumulate in support of a role for alpha oscillations in attention selection and control. Here we first review evidence that 8–12 Hz oscillations in the brain have a general inhibitory role in cognitive processing, with an emphasis on their role in visual processing. Then, we summarize the evidence in support of our recent proposal that alpha represents a pulsed-inhibition of ongoing neural activity. The phase of the ongoing electroencephalography can influence evoked activity and subsequent processing, and …

Intrinsic And Extrinsic Factors That Control Motor Neuron Vulnerability In Als, Pembe Hande Ozdinler

IMSA Great Minds Program ®

Even though there are millions of neurons in our brain, in neurodegenerative diseases only a select set of neurons show vulnerability and progressively degenerate. In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), motor neurons in the cortex and spinal cord show selective vulnerability. Their progressive degeneration results in lack of control over voluntary movement, without affecting memory and cognitive function. We are developing novel approaches to understand cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for motor neuron degeneration. Our findings will allow cell-based therapeutic interventions in the near future.

Synaptic Reorganization Of Inhibitory Hilar Interneuron Circuitry After Traumatic Brain Injury In Mice, Robert F. Hunt, Stephen W. Scheff, Bret N. Smith

Physiology Faculty Publications

Functional plasticity of synaptic networks in the dentate gyrus has been implicated in the development of posttraumatic epilepsy and in cognitive dysfunction after traumatic brain injury, but little is known about potentially pathogenic changes in inhibitory circuits. We examined synaptic inhibition of dentate granule cells and excitability of surviving GABAergic hilar interneurons 8–13 weeks after cortical contusion brain injury in transgenic mice that express enhanced green fluorescent protein in a subpopulation of inhibitory neurons. Whole-cell voltage-clamp recordings in granule cells revealed a reduction in spontaneous and miniature IPSC frequency after head injury; no concurrent change in paired-pulse ratio was found …

Modulation Of Hypoglossal Motoneurons By Nitric Oxide, Justin Philip Benoit

Master's Theses

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)- the occurrence of repetitive episodes of airway obstruction during sleep- is considered a major health problem affecting up to 9% of adults in the United States (Parish & Somers, 2004). The hypoglossal motor nucleus (HMN) controls genioglossus muscle tone and is critically important for maintaining airway patency; loss of excitatory input to the HMN during sleep results in disfacilitation of hypoglossal motoneurons, increased airway resistance and contributes to the development of OSA (Horner R. L., 2007). However, a fundamental question of sleep medicine that remains unresolved is what mechanisms help maintain airway patency during sleep? A …

Drosophila Model For Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorders: Role For The Insulin Pathway, Rachael L. French, K D. Mcclure, U Heberlein

Faculty Publications, Biological Sciences

Prenatal exposure to ethanol in humans results in a wide range of developmental abnormalities, including growth deficiency, developmental delay, reduced brain size, permanent neurobehavioral abnormalities and fetal death. Here we describe the use of Drosophila melanogaster as a model for exploring the effects of ethanol exposure on development and behavior. We show that developmental ethanol exposure causes reduced viability, developmental delay and reduced adult body size. We find that flies reared on ethanol-containing food have smaller brains and imaginal discs, which is due to reduced cell division rather than increased apoptosis. Additionally, we show that, as in mammals, flies reared …

Modeling Hemorrhagic Stroke And Vasospasm In The Rodent, Sarah Katherine Jane Wendel

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In January 2010, I started work as an undergraduate research assistant at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Dr. Mary Lou Vallano’s laboratory in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology. My research project was part of a collaborative effort with the laboratory of Dr. Eric Deshaies, a vascular neurosurgeon at Upstate. The goal was to establish a rodent model of subarachnoid hemorrhage and delayed vasospasm, and to test possible protective strategies. We used an adult rat model, in which two injections of autologous blood were given in the cisterna magna region of the brain. Analysis was done using a combination of …

Assessment Of Suny Upstate Medical University’S Child Telepsychiatry Consultation Program, Mary E. Lau

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Objectives: The project assesses the child telepsychiatry services provided by SUNY Upstate psychiatrists to several county mental health clinics in central New York State. Method: Data for forty-five patients was extracted from pre-consultation forms completed by the referring clinic and post-consultation summaries completed by the Upstate psychiatrists that occurred between July 13^th, 2009 and May 12^th, 2010. The study identified characteristics of patients for whom telepsychiatry consultations were sought, reviewed recommendations provided by the telepsychiatry consultant, and noted recommended changes in therapy and medication. Results: Analysis of the data showed that there was a large variation …

Delineating The Mechanism(S) Of Bdnf/Trkb Mediated Proliferation In Neuroblastoma, Timothy C. Graham

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Delineating the mechanism(s) of BDNF/TrkB mediated proliferation in Neuroblastoma

Timothy Christopher Graham, B.S.

Supervisory Professor: Patrick Zweidler-McKay, MD/PhD

Neuroblastoma is the most common extra-cranial solid tumor in children, arising from neural crest precursor cells.  The neurotrophin receptors (TrkA/B/C) have been implicated as important prognostic markers, linking the biology of the tumor to patient outcome.  High expression of TrkA and TrkC receptors have been linked to favorable biological features and high patient survival, while TrkB is expressed in unfavorable, aggressive tumors.  Several studies suggest that high levels and activation of TrkB by its ligand brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) stimulates tumor cell …

Role Of Synapsin In Long-Term Synaptic Facilitation In Aplysia, Anne Hart

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Enhanced expression of the presynaptic protein synapsin has been correlated with certain forms of long-term plasticity and learning and memory. However, the regulation and requirement for enhanced synapsin expression in long-term memory remains unknown. In the present study the technical advantages of the marine mollusc Aplysia were exploited in order to address this issue. In Aplysia, learning-induced enhancement in synaptic strength is modulated by serotonin (5-HT) and treatment with 5-HT in vitro of the sensorimotor synapse induces long-term facilitation (LTF) of synaptic transmission, which lasts for days, as well as the formation of new connections between the sensory and …

Second-Order Conditioning In Drosophila, Christopher J. Tabone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Animals possess the ability to associate neutral stimuli in their environment with both rewards and punishment. A conditioned stimulus (CS1) such as a smell or sound, can become associated with an unconditioned stimulus (US), such as a food reward, to elicit what is known as the conditioned response (CR). This type of learning is commonly referred to as classical conditioning or first-order conditioning (FOC). Second-order conditioning (SOC) is an extension of this type of association wherein a novel stimulus is introduced (CS2) and associated with a previously conditioning first-order stimulus (CS1). As a result, the organism may show an attraction …

Cocaine Dependence: The Role Of Serotonin Genes In, Lorena Maili

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Animal studies have shown that behavioral responses to cocaine-related cues are altered by serotonergic medications. The effects of pharmacological agents on serotonin receptors 2a (5-HT2A) and 2c (5-HT2C), have yielded results suggesting that selective 5-HT2A antagonists and 5-HT2C agonists promote the disruption of cocaine-associated memories. One measure of cocaine related cues in humans is attentional bias, in which cocaine dependent individuals show greater response latency for cocaine related words than neutral words. Data from our laboratory shows that cocaine dependent subjects have altered attentional bias compared to controls. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the role of the …

The Neural Substrates Of Multisensory Speech Perception, Audrey R. Nath

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Comprehending speech is one of the most important human behaviors, but we are only beginning to understand how the brain accomplishes this difficult task. One key to speech perception seems to be that the brain integrates the independent sources of information available in the auditory and visual modalities in a process known as multisensory integration. This allows speech perception to be accurate, even in environments in which one modality or the other is ambiguous in the context of noise. Previous electrophysiological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments have implicated the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) in auditory-visual integration of …

Chimpanzee Vocal Signaling Points To A Multimodal Origin Of Human Language, Jared P. Taglialatela, Jamie L. Russell, Jennifer A. Schaeffer, William D. Hopkins

Faculty Articles

The evolutionary origin of human language and its neurobiological foundations has long been the object of intense scientific debate. Although a number of theories have been proposed, one particularly contentious model suggests that human language evolved from a manual gestural communication system in a common ape-human ancestor. Consistent with a gestural origins theory are data indicating that chimpanzees intentionally and referentially communicate via manual gestures, and the production of manual gestures, in conjunction with vocalizations, activates the chimpanzee Broca’s area homologue – a region in the human brain that is critical for the planning and execution of language. However, it …

Analysis Of Morris Water Maze Data With Bayesian Statistical Methods, Maxym V. Myroshnychenko, Anton Westveld, Jefferson Kinney

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

Neuroscientists commonly use a Morris Water Maze to assess learning in rodents. In his kind of a maze, the subjects learn to swim toward a platform hidden in opaque water as they orient themselves according to the cues on the walls. This protocol presents a challenge to statistical analysis, because an artificial cut-off must be set for those experimental subjects that do not reach the platform so as they do not drown from exhaustion. This fact leads to the data being right censored. In our experimental data, which compares learning in rodents that have chemically induced symptoms of schizophrenia to …

Aging Is Associated With Positive Responding To Neutral Information But Reduced Recovery From Negative Information, Carien M. Van Reekum, Stacey M. Schaefer, Regina C. Lapate, Catherine J. Norris, Lawrence L. Greischar, Richard J. Davidson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Studies on aging and emotion suggest an increase in reported positive affect, a processing bias of positive over negative information, as well as increasingly adaptive regulation in response to negative events with advancing age. These findings imply that older individuals evaluate information differently, resulting in lowered reactivity to, and/or faster recovery from, negative information, while maintaining more positive responding to positive information. We examined this hypothesis in an ongoing study on Midlife in the US (MIDUS II) where emotional reactivity and recovery were assessed in a large number of respondents (N = 159) from a wide age range (36–84 …

Dopamine’S Role In Ethanol Induced Behavioral Disinhibition, Erick Saldes^, Kyung-An Han*

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Spring 2011

Ethanol is commonly associated with disinhibited motor and sexual behaviors in humans. Dopamine and serotonin are implicated in these processes since they regulate reward, motivation, aggression, movement control, and sexual behavior. Disinhibited behavior such as impulsivity (loss of impulse control) is also related to addiction. The major goal of this study is to identify the role of dopamine in disinhibited behavior using the genetic model system, Drosophila melanogaster.  For this task we developed a novel apparatus called Flypub. It is a plastic chamber with a clear top for recording and monitoring fly behavior before, during, and after ethanol exposure. …

Analyses Of Spinal Cord Mononuclear Cells Following Spinal Nerve L5 Transection-Induced Neuropathic Pain In Wild Type, Cd4 Knockout, And Cd40 Knockout Mice, Holly Beaulac

All Theses And Dissertations

CD4⁺ T cells and CD40, highly expressed in activated microglia, along with microglia themselves have been demonstrated to contribute to mechanical hypersensitivity in a murine model of neuropathic pain, spinal nerve L5 transection (L5Tx). This study investigated whether CD4 and CD40 mediate their effects by affecting spinal cord microglial responses and/or leukocyte infiltration into the spinal cord. L5Tx was performed on wild type (WT), CD4 knockout (KO), and CD40 KO mice. Mononuclear cells from the lumbar spinal cord were collected and the total number of microglia (CD45^loCD11b⁺) and infiltrating leukocytes (CD45^hi) were analyzed …

Modulation Of Glutamate-Mediated Neuronal Cell Death By Neurosteroids, Benjamin J. Phelps

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and permanent disability in the United States. Approximately 1.7 million cases of TBI are reported annually. After an injury to the head, excessive glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter, is released into the extracellular fluid resulting in the excitotoxic death of neuronal tissue. Recent studies have suggested neurosteroids, may serve as an effective means by which to modulate excitotoxicity via the excitatory neurotransmitter alpha-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA). Using mixed astrocyte-neuronal cell cultures (14-16 DIV) exposed to increasing concentrations of AMPA as the model for TBI, the experiments examined the effect of the neurosteroids, …