Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

Lisdexamfetamine Is An Effective Monotherapy For Moderate To Severe Binge Eating Disorder, Benjamin Young

Clinical Research in Practice: The Journal of Team Hippocrates

A clinical decision report using

McElroy SL, Hudson J, Ferreira-Cornwell MC, Radewonuk J, Whitaker T, Gasior M. Lisdexamfetamine dimesylate for adults with moderate to severe binge eating disorder: Results of two pivotal phase 3 randomized controlled trials. Neuropsychopharmacology. 2016;41(5):1251-1260. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.275

for a young woman requesting a novel pharmacological intervention for a Binge Eating Disorder (BED).

Nutrition’S Impact On Mental Well-Being, Amy A. Kauer

University Honors Program

This honors thesis examines the relationship between nutrition and mental well-being by investigating nutrition’s relationship with mood, cognition, mental dexterity, chronic disease, mental health, and treatment plans. The author of the thesis researched and investigated the following questions: 1. Is diet and mood intertwined? 2. How does nutrition impact cognition and mental dexterity? 3. How does nutrition impact chronic disease? 4. What is the correlation between nutrition and mental health, and is nutrition being addressed in mental health treatment? The author found six key components to a healthy diet through a literature review. These six components include complex carbohydrates, EFAs …

Mtorc1 And Mtorc2 Complexes Regulate The Untargeted Metabolomics And Amino Acid Metabolites Profile Through Mitochondrial Bioenergetic Functions In Pancreatic Beta Cells, Ghada A. Soliman, Rinat Abzalimov, Ye He

Advanced Science Research Center

Background: Pancreatic beta cells regulate bioenergetics efficiency and secret insulin in response to glucose and nutrient availability. The mechanistic Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) network orchestrates pancreatic progenitor cell growth and metabolism by nucleating two complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2. Objective: To determine the impact of mTORC1/mTORC2 inhibition on amino acid metabolism in mouse pancreatic beta cells (Beta-TC-6 cells, ATCC-CRL-11506) using high-resolution metabolomics (HRM) and live-mitochondrial functions. Methods: Pancreatic beta TC-6 cells were incubated for 24 h with either: RapaLink-1 (RL); Torin-2 (T); rapamycin (R); metformin (M); a combination of RapaLink-1 and metformin (RLM); Torin-2 and metformin (TM); compared to the control. …

The Biological Influence Of Stories & The Importance Of Reading Fiction, Elise N. Good, Katharine Schaab

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

Fictional narratives and stories have persisted throughout human history. However, perhaps due to a bias that stories offered nothing more than entertainment for the reader or perhaps that they are not useful outside of the realm of academia, the research within science academia has been lacking in literature on why these narratives have endured. Unfortunately, due to the lack of conversation across disciplines, particularly those of science and literature, this subject has not been thoroughly investigated through an interdisciplinary lens. Within this paper, the goal is to analyze the benefits of fictional narratives through biological, evolutionary, and neuropsychological perspectives. Research …

Evaluating The Relationship Between Short- And Long-Term Neural Adaptations To Motor Skill Acquisition And Retention, Federico Iacoangeli

Journal for Sports Neuroscience

Attempting to understand the neurophysiological underpinnings of learned behaviors and the process of learning itself has yielded interesting findings relating to what happens in the brain and across the nervous system when learning a new skill. The nervous system displays several structural, functional and neurochemical adaptations to motor learning which have been highlighted through the use of neuroimaging techniques such as fMRI, EEG and TMS. This review attempts to outline the neural adaptations governing the acquisition and retention of motor skills, as well as build a timeline for these adaptations following Fitt’s model of motor learning (Fitts and Posner 1967). …

Trait Anxiety In Mixed Martial Artists, Julian Pino, Olivier Van Hauwermeiren, Jordan Kwamanakweenda, Corey Peacock, Jaime Tartar

Journal for Sports Neuroscience

ABSTRACT

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a hybrid combat sport incorporating techniques from boxing, wrestling, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, Karate, Muay Thai (Thai boxing), and other disciplines. Having only been deemed a competitive sport in 1993 by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), not a lot of research has been done on these athletes. Research done so far on other areas of athletics has shown that personality traits can predict various cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, elevated levels of Trait Anxiety have been shown to deteriorate non-MMA athletes’ overall performance in high-pressure situations. The present study aimed to investigate the presence of …

The Ubiquitin Ligase Siah2 Is A Female-Specific Regulator Of Circadian Rhythms And Metabolism, Tsedey Mekbib, Ting Chung Suen, Aisha Rollins-Hairston, Kiandra Smith, Ariel Armstrong, Cloe Gray, Sharon Owino, Kenkichi Baba, Julie E. Baggs, J. Christopher Ehlen, Gianluca Tosini, Jason P. Debruyne

Neuroscience: Faculty Publications

Circadian clocks enable organisms to predict and align their behaviors and physiologies to constant daily day-night environmental cycle. Because the ubiquitin ligase Siah2 has been identified as a potential regulator of circadian clock function in cultured cells, we have used SIAH2-deficient mice to examine its function in vivo. Our experiments demonstrate a striking and unexpected sexually dimorphic effect of SIAH2-deficiency on the regulation of rhythmically expressed genes in the liver. The absence of SIAH2 in females, but not in males, altered the expression of core circadian clock genes and drastically remodeled the rhythmic transcriptome in the liver by increasing the …

Chloride Channels That Mediate A Transient Nitric Oxide-Dependent Synaptic Polarity Switch In Retinal Amacrine Cells., Tyler Christopher Rodriguez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cytosolic chloride (Cl^-) concentration determines whether GABAergic and glycinergic synapses are inhibitory or excitatory. Ionotropic GABA and glycine receptors passively conduct Cl­^- leading to membrane depolarization or hyperpolarization depending on the Cl^- equilibrium potential. Accordingly, the distribution of Cl^- across the plasma membrane has the potential to determine the properties of networks of retinal amacrine cells (ACs) and their postsynaptic partners. Ion channels are responsible for establishing Cl^- reversal potential. Nitric oxide (NO) is a signaling molecule that can be generated in the inner retina where ACs form synapses. We have shown that NO …

Social Virtual Reality: Neurodivergence And Inclusivity In The Metaverse, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Whereas traditional teaching environments encourage lively and engaged interaction and reward extrovert qualities, introverts, and others with symptoms that make social engagement difficult, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are often disadvantaged. This population is often more engaged in quieter, low-key learning environments and often does not speak up and answer questions in traditional lecture-style classes. These individuals are often passed over in school and later in their careers for not speaking up and are assumed to not be as competent as their gregarious and outgoing colleagues. With the rise of the metaverse and democratization of virtual reality (VR) technology, …

Stress-Related Psychopathology During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Katie A. Mclaughlin, Maya L. Rosen, Steven W. Kasparek, Alexandra M. Rodman

Neuroscience: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced widespread societal changes that have required ongoing adaptation. Unsurprisingly, stress-related psychopathology has increased during the pandemic, in both children and adults. We review these patterns through the lens of several leading conceptual models of the link between stress and psychopathology. Some of these models focus on characteristics of environmental stressors—including cumulative risk, specific stressor types, and stress sensitization approaches. Understanding the specific aspects of environmental stressors that are most likely to lead to psychopathology can shed light on who may be in most need of clinical intervention. Other models center on factors that can buffer …

Spatial Representation In Postrhinal Cortex, Patrick Lachance

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Animals rely on a variety of internal and external cues to orient themselves when navigating their environments and determining their current spatial context. Information regarding these cues enters the brain from the navigator’s first-person perspective. Information of this type is considered to be egocentric, or self-centered. However, decades of behavioral, electrophysiological, and imaging research suggest that the brain contains a rich collection of spatial representations that are unrestricted by the animal’s first-person perspective, and instead are defined relative to the surrounding environment. These representations are considered allocentric, or world-centered. Despite an abundance of promising modeling work, the specific mechanisms by …

Bakner And Coste Faculty-Student Summer Collaborative Research Grant: Grant Activities Evaluation Post Grant, Sarah Coste

Faculty & Staff Publications

Concise Abstract of the Results of the Work. Our research attempted to understand mechanisms underlying alcohol use and factors that may contribute to alcohol use disorder (AUD). More specifically, the present series of experiments, phases 1 through 4, expand on rodent models research to study binge-like ethanol consumption using the “Drinking In the Dark” (DID) procedure (see Thiele &Navarro, 2014 for a review). In DID, ethanol (EtOH) is provided in the home cage for 3 hours, beginning 3 hours after the start of the dark phase of the light:dark cycle when nocturnal rodents are most active (adapted from Rhodes et …

Brain Functional Topology Differs By Sex In Cognitively Normal Older Adults, Zhengshi Yang, Filippo Cieri, Jefferson W. Kinney, Jeffrey L. Cummings, Dietmar Cordes, Jessica Z K Caldwell

Brain Health Faculty Research

Introduction: Late onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, in which almost 70% of patients are women. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that women show worse global FC metrics compared to men, and further hypothesized a sex-specific positive correlation between FC metrics and cognitive scores in women. Methods: We studied cognitively healthy individuals from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohort, with resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Metrics derived from graph theoretical analysis and functional connectomics were used to assess the global/regional sex differences in terms of functional integration and segregation, considering the amyloid status and the contributions of …

Genetic Heterogeneity In Schizophrenia And Contribution Of Context To Vowel Recognition, Eva Childers

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

This dissertation is composed of three chapters that address two distinct topics. Chapter 2 addresses the use of consonantal context in vowel perception. Previous studies have demonstrated that context is important for vowel identification, however, this effect may be an artifact of stimuli production. To address this potential confound, we used stimuli extracted from an audiobook and asked subjects to identify vowels encased in consonants and isolated by themselves. We show that subjects had improved vowel identification when the vowel is presented with a consonantal framing, suggesting there is information contained in the surrounding context that is important for phoneme …

Mirnas Levels In A Streptozocin Model Of Alzheimer’S Disease, Nada Moustafa

Theses and Dissertations

Dementia entails a progressive decrease in cognitive functions, with 50%-75% of cases attributed to Alzheimer’s disease (AD); an aging-associated condition characterized by the build-up of tangled phosphorylated Tau (p-Tau) protein and beta-amyloid (Aβ) depositions. Sporadic AD (sAD) is multifactorial in nature, resulting from a combination of environmental and genetic predisposing factors. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a leading risk factor for dementia, and deregulation of brain glucose metabolism is associated with early cognitive affection in sAD. Thus, the diabetogenic agent Streptozotocin (STZ) is used to experimentally create an AD model in animals (STZ-induced sAD), in which abnormalities in cerebral …

Norepinephrine Regulation Of Spatial Memory Using The Barnes Maze In Male And Female Rats, Serena Simpson, Ali Gheidi Phd, Nareen Sadik, Cameron J. Davidson Phd, Shane A. Perrine Phd

Medical Student Research Symposium

The role of norepinephrine (NE) in learning and memory has been extensively studied, yet its contribution remains to be clarified. This study aimed to investigate the role of NE on spatial learning and memory in female and male rats using a Barnes maze assay. We used N-(2-chloroethyl)-N-ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (DSP-4), a specific noradrenergic neurotoxin that can cross the blood brain barrier, to deplete NE stores. We hypothesized that brain NE ablation would attenuate spatial learning and memory in rats. Loss of NE by DSP-4 was determined by measuring NE (and dopamine and serotonin) levels in several brain regions using HPLC. For the …

Hiding Behind The Title: Bridging The Gap Between Identity And Leadership Through Neuroscience, Emotional Intelligence And Ethical Management, Alicia S. Huddleston

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Leadership is the key determinant in the success of any organization, and leaders have an immeasurable impact on the lives and performances of those they have been entrusted to develop, support and lead. School principals are an integral part of the leadership tapestry within society and many people have been impacted by a school principal. Often enough, there are individuals who lead with or behind their title versus understanding first who they are intrinsically, and then working through those dynamics to effectively lead their own lives. When leaders are able to do this, then and only then are they equipped …

Examining Limbic Sexual Dimorphisms In Schizophrenia, Kennedy S. Madrid

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that affects a significant number of individuals in the United States and can have numerous different symptoms. Recently, interest in the differences between the neuroanatomy of individuals with schizophrenia and individuals without schizophrenia has emerged, specifically the sexual dimorphism in individuals with schizophrenia. This study aimed to gain a better understanding of the sexual dimorphisms of two structures in the limbic system: the hippocampus and amygdala. Data was harmonized and analyzed from two datasets to determine the sexual dimorphic factor of these structures in healthy controls and individuals with schizophrenia. Demographic features were also taken …

Mpc-Stanet: Alzheimer’S Disease Recognition Method Based On Multiple Phantom Convolution And Spatial Transformation Attention Mechanism, Yujian Liu, Kun Tang, Weiwei Cai, Aibin Chen, Guoxiong Zhou, Liujun Li, Runmin Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with insidious and irreversible onset. The recognition of the disease stage of AD and the administration of effective interventional treatment are important to slow down and control the progression of the disease. However, due to the unbalanced distribution of the acquired data volume, the problem that the features change inconspicuously in different disease stages of AD, and the scattered and narrow areas of the feature areas (hippocampal region, medial temporal lobe, etc.), the effective recognition of AD remains a critical unmet need. Therefore, we first employ class-balancing operation using data expansion and …

Respiratory Morbidity And Neurodevelopmental Outcomes In Infants Born Preterm: A Complex Web, Anna Maria Hibbs

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary is on the original article by Yu et al. on pages 1246–1253 of this issue.