Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons^™

The Science Of Animal Sentience And The Politics Of Animal Welfare Should Be Kept Separate, Marian Stamp Dawkins

Animal Sentience

Although linked historically by Rowan et al., the scientific study of animal sentience and political campaigns to improve animal welfare should be kept separate, for at least two reasons. First, the separation makes it clear that standards of evidence acceptable for ethical or political decisions on animal welfare can be lower than those required for a rigorously scientific approach to animal sentience. Second, it helps to avoid confirmatory bias in the form of giving undue weight to results that are in line with pre-conceived ideas and political views.

The Reality And Prevalence Of Animal Sentience, Antonio Damasio

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al use findings from neurobiology, clinical neurology, and general biology to argue for the extensive presence of sentience in animals, but they are wisely cautious concerning when in the phylogenetic scale that emergence occurred.

The Writing Brain: Writing As An Exercise Of Functional Network Optimization To Facilitate Psychologically Healing Effects, Isabelle Antolin

Scripps Senior Theses

James Baldwin wrote, “When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know” (as cited in Plimpton 1989). Writers, like James Baldwin, have for a long time acknowledged that writing has some psychological effect. However, the neural basis of this effect has yet to be understood. Neuroimaging studies have examined writing as a creative process, identifying a predominantly left fronto-parieto-temporal network activation during writing tasks (including brainstorming, drafting, and revising). Importantly, one study examining poetry composition found that a generative phase of writing was associated with a significant anti-correlative activation pattern between the dorsal attention network (DAN) …

Legal Recognition Of Animal Sentience: The Case For Cautious Optimism, Jane Kotzmann

Animal Sentience

Rowan et al.’s target article provides a valuable indication of the work that was required to reach the point where animals are recognised as sentient in various laws. To ensure this work was not in vain, the language of sentience needs to be used as a moral currency to demand further cultural change involving greater human respect for animals.

Elementary Teacher Levels Of Empathy And Responses To Boys Exhibiting Odd-Like Behaviors, Dominique Deveaux

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The problem that was the focus of this study is that disruptive classroom behavior has increased. According to a 2019 survey conducted by the consulting firm Education Advisory Board, teachers have reported a spike in disruptive classroom behaviors. Attitudes towards school expressed by students who exhibit behavior that characterizes oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) are influenced by teacher interactions and support, but no recent study had determined levels of empathy used by elementary school teachers. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how elementary school general education teachers describe the level of empathy they apply in reacting to and …

A Horor Theory For Introspective Consciousness, Adriana Renero, Richard Brown

Publications and Research

Higher-order theories of consciousness typically account for introspection in terms of one’s higher-order thoughts being conscious, which would require a third-order thought—i.e., a thought about a thought about a mental state. In this work, we offer an alternative account of introspection that builds on the recent Higher-Order Representation of a Representation (HOROR) theory of phenomenal consciousness. According to HOROR theory, phenomenal consciousness consists in having the right kind of higher-order representation. We claim that this theory can be extended to introspection by recognizing that there is a distinctive kind of consciousness—i.e., introspective consciousness—which can be accounted for as the theory …

Beyond Homogenous Decision-Making Models: Role Of Brain Areas Interaction And Heterogeneity, Mohsen Rakhshan

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Most existing mechanistic models of decision making consider microcircuits within a homogenous brain area and fail to consider the distributed nature of this cognitive process. More specifically, these models do not take into account: a) how different types of information might influence choice in different stages of the process; and b) how interactions and the heterogeneity between circuits across different brain areas might be essential for the process. In this dissertation, I present a combination of experimental and modeling approaches to study distributed nature of the decision-making by examining both the distributed processing of information as well as the interaction …

Does Bisphenol-A, An Estrogen-Like Environmental Toxin, Disrupt Expression Of The Neuronal Chloride Exporter Protein During Early Brain Development?, Mayra S. Mendez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Bisphenol A (BPA), a manufactured compound found in consumer products, is known to adversely affect early brain development by disrupting normal estrogen signaling. Recently, BPA was reported to suppress expression of a gene encoding the neuron-specific chloride ion transporter, KCC2. Human and animal studies show suppressing KCC2 can cause neuronal and behavioral hyperactivity. Therefore, some adverse effects of BPA may be due to KCC2 suppression and consequent neuronal hyperactivity. This study aimed to determine whether BPA exposure during brain development alters KCC2 expression. A secondary purpose was to evaluate whether a new transgenic zebrafish line, KCC2:mCitrine,could be used to track …

The Benefits Of Astaxanthin To Improve Pain Relief In Patients With Painful Diabetic Neuropathy: An Open-Label, Randomized Controlled Trial, Rizaldy Taslim Pinzon, Mary Rose Angelina Budi Harsana

Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research

Treatment of diabetic neuropathy is still carried out by providing symptomatic therapy, which only improves ± 50% of the total symptoms felt by patients, but does not tackle the underlying causes of the disease. Astaxanthin is a potent antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diabetic carotenoid that could be an additional treatment option. We aimed to measure the effectiveness of administering astaxanthin as an additional therapy to improve the impact of pain and discomfort experienced daily by diabetes mellitus patients with painful diabetic neuropathy. We conducted a randomized experimental study with an open label design of 36 patients who had been diagnosed with …

Valorisation Of The Effects Of Bioactive Compounds Of The Ethanolic Extract Of Ramalina Farinacea (Ramalinaceae) On The Development, Eating And Pupation Behavior Of Drosophila Melanogaster (Diptera: Drosophilidae), Fatma Zohra Saadane, Nour El Imene Boublata, Sarra Habbachi, Abir Bouzar, Waffa Habbachi, Abderachid Slimani, Abdelkrim Tahraoui

Journal of Bioresource Management

Plants are rich in bioactive chemical secondary metabolites and have proven insecticidal activity by killing or repelling insects. In this work, we aim to evaluate the direct and delayed effects of ethanolic plant extracts on the vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The treatment was performed by ingestion on second instar larvae (L2) to evaluate the impact of the ethanolic extract on development for 15 days and subsequently on the feeding behavior of the larvae. The results of this study indicate a slowing down of pupal growth until the adult stage, at the three concentrations (0.25 µg/ml, 0.5 µg/ml, 1.5 …

Depression And Behavioral Changes Associated With Social Media Dependency During Covid-19 Pandemic Among University Students In Bangladesh: A Cross- Sectional Study, Sushmita Karmokar, Md. Ashraful Islam, Mohammad Hamid Al Muktadir, Rakibul Hasan, Abu Montakim Tareq, Mohammad Nurul Amin, Talha Bin Emran

Makara Journal of Health Research

Background: With its rapid spread, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had a detrimental effect on students’ psychological well-being, depression, and behavioral changes due to indefinite educational leaves, lockdowns, restricted outdoor activities, and excess use of social media. This study aims to assess the relationship of social media exposure with the psychological well-being, depression, and behavioral changes of Bangladeshi university students.

Methods: A web-based cross-sectional survey was carried out on 530 students from June 17 to July 10, 2020, to evaluate psychological well-being, depression, behavioral changes, and social media exposure via self-reported measures.

Results: The prevalence of …

Affective Computing For Late-Life Mood And Cognitive Disorders, Erin Smith, Eric A. Storch, Ipsit Vahia, Stephen T.C. Wong, Helen Lavretsky, Jeffrey L. Cummings, Harris A. Eyre

Brain Health Faculty Research

Affective computing (also referred to as artificial emotion intelligence or emotion AI) is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate emotion or other affective phenomena. With the rapid growth in the aging population around the world, affective computing has immense potential to benefit the treatment and care of late-life mood and cognitive disorders. For late-life depression, affective computing ranging from vocal biomarkers to facial expressions to social media behavioral analysis can be used to address inadequacies of current screening and diagnostic approaches, mitigate loneliness and isolation, provide more personalized treatment approaches, and …

Linguistic Variation From Cognitive Variability: The Case Of English 'Have', Muye Zhang

Linguistics Graduate Dissertations

In this dissertation, I seek to construct a model of meaning variation built upon variability in linguistic structure, conceptual structure, and cognitive makeup, and in doing so, exemplify an approach to studying meaning that is both linguistically principled and neuropsychologically grounded. As my test case, I make use of the English lexical item ‘have' by proposing a novel analysis of its meaning based on its well-described variability in English and its embed- ding into crosslinguistically consistent patterns of variation and change.

I support this analysis by investigating its real-time comprehension patterns through behavioral, electropsychophysiological, and hemodynamic brain data, thereby incorporating …

Cgrp-Driven Lateralization Of Pain Modulation By The Central Amygdala, Heather Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The central amygdala (CeA) is a bilateral, mid limbic brain region involved in the processing of pain and emotion. Interestingly, the left and right CeA are functionally lateralized in the context of bladder pain, with the left and right CeA having opposing effects on bladder pain-like behavior. However, the specific mechanisms driving these divergent functions are unknown. Nociceptive signals from the bladder are relayed to the CeA via projection neurons in the parabrachial nucleus (PBN) that express high levels of calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP). In these studies, we investigated the influence of PBN CGRP signaling in the left and right …

Probing The Role Of Astrocytes In The Pathology Of Fragile X Syndrome With Human Stem Cells, Baiyan Ren

Theses & Dissertations

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is an X-linked neurodevelopmental disorder related to intellectual disability and the most common monogenic cause of autism spectrum disorder. FXS is mainly caused by an expansion of CGG repeats in the 5’-untranslated region of fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene, leading to the loss of expression of fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Astrocytes are the most abundant glial cells in the central nervous system (CNS). Loss of FMRP in astrocytes has been found to contribute to structural and functional synaptic deficits in the Fmr1-KO mouse model. The contribution of human astrocytes, however, to the …

Effects Of Catharanthine On Dopamine Release In The Nucleus Accumbens And Ethanol Consumption, Emily Baldwin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis discusses the history of catharanthine and related compounds, and their potential anti-addictive properties. Current research is exploring possible mechanisms of these properties. Past studies have found catharanthine has effects on neurons that project to the mesocorticolimbic system, an area implicated in addiction. We have seen that catharanthine decreases evoked dopamine (DA) release but increases basal DA release. This is the first study to investigate catharanthine’s effect on DA transmission in vivo. Using microdialysis, we determined the effect of catharanthine on DA in the nucleus accumbens of the striatum. This study determines the effect of different doses of …

Let There Be Light: Restoring Vision With Optogenetics, Kristin Woodard

Scientific Kenyon: The Neuroscience Edition

No abstract provided.

Granulins In Norm And Neurodegenerative Pathologies, Anukool Bhopatkar

Dissertations

Granulins (GRNs) are small, cysteine-rich modules produced from the proteolytic cleavage of the precursor protein called progranulin (PGRN). GRNs are present in the form of seven tandem repeats within the precursor and are known to be produced in the extracellular and in lysosomal environments. In physiology, PGRN and GRNs plays pleiotropic roles such as neuronal growth and differentiation, immunomodulation, wound healing. Recent studies have implicated pathological role for PGRN in Alzheimer disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) but specific mechanism(s) remains unclear. However, potential interactions between GRNs and Ab42 and TDP-43 seem like a plausible underlying mechanism. Studies presented here …

Inter-Subject Correlation While Listening To Minimalist Music: A Study Of Electrophysiological And Behavioral Responses To Steve Reich’S Piano Phase, Tysen Dauer, Duc T. Nguyen, Nick Gang, Jacek P. Dmochowski, Jonathan Berger, Blair Kaneshiro

Publications and Research

Musical minimalism utilizes the temporal manipulation of restricted collections of rhythmic, melodic, and/or harmonic materials. One example, Steve Reich’s Piano Phase, offers listeners readily audible formal structure with unpredictable events at the local level. For example, pattern recurrences may generate strong expectations which are violated by small temporal and pitch deviations. A hyper-detailed listening strategy prompted by these minute deviations stands in contrast to the type of listening engagement typically cultivated around functional tonal Western music. Recent research has suggested that the inter-subject correlation (ISC) of electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to natural audio-visual stimuli objectively indexes a state of “engagement,” demonstrating …

Rare And Low Frequency Genomic Variants Impacting Neuronal Functions Modify The Dup7q11.23 Phenotype, Farah Qaiser, Yue Yin, Carolyn B. Mervis, Colleen A. Morris, Bonita P. Klein-Tasman, Elaine Tam, Lucy R. Osborne, Ryan K.C. Yuen

School of Medicine Faculty Research

© 2021, The Author(s). Background: 7q11.23 duplication (Dup7) is one of the most frequent recurrent copy number variants (CNVs) in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but based on gold-standard assessments, only 19% of Dup7 carriers have ASD, suggesting that additional genetic factors are necessary to manifest the ASD phenotype. To assess the contribution of additional genetic variants to the Dup7 phenotype, we conducted whole-genome sequencing analysis of 20 Dup7 carriers: nine with ASD (Dup7-ASD) and 11 without ASD (Dup7-non-ASD). Results: We identified three rare variants of potential clinical relevance for ASD: a 1q21.1 microdeletion (Dup7-non-ASD) and two deletions which …