Neurosciences Commons^™

What Is The Readiness Potential?, Aaron Schurger, Pengbo 'Ben' Hu, Joanna Pak, Adina L. Roskies

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The readiness potential (RP) has been widely interpreted to indicate preparation for movement and is used to argue that our brains decide before we do. It thus has been a fulcrum for discussion about the neuroscience of free will.

Recent computational models provide an alternative framework for thinking about the significance of the RP, suggesting instead that the RP is a natural result of the operation of a stochastic accumulator process of decision-making, analyzed by time-locking to threshold-crossing events.

These models call for a reevaluation of: (i) the ontological standing of the RP as reflecting a real, causally efficacious signal …

014— Promoting Interest In Stem Through Neuroscience In A Local After School Program, William Widarsono, Julie Perrone, Melissa Kaplan, Tucker Landwehr

GREAT Day Posters

We are going to explain our three experiences we had with RKids: what information we talked about (the 4 lobes and 5 senses, optical illusions, and memory), how well they understood the concepts, how much they enjoyed learning, what we thought was the most effective method for teaching them Neuroscience at a young age, what tools and supplies we used, if their Kahoot! answers improved over time, etc. We want to see if our methods got them further intrigued into the science field.

Domestic Violence In The World Of Athletics, Abbigayle L. Gesler

ONU Student Research Colloquium

There is an ongoing debate whether athletics is linked to domestic violence in professional athletes or individuals who were athletes for a long period of time. The purpose of this research is to see if being an athlete leads to domestic violence, and if so, to find ways to decrease the numbers. Professional athletes with a history of domestic violence will be researched and this could help determine if there is a link between the two. To get an idea on aggression levels in athletes, the Buss & Perry Survey was sent out via email to all Ohio Northern students, …

Insects Provide Unique Systems To Investigate How Early-Life Experience Alters The Brain And Behavior, Rebecca R. Westwick, Clare C. Rittschof

Entomology Faculty Publications

Early-life experiences have strong and long-lasting consequences for behavior in a surprising diversity of animals. Determining which environmental inputs cause behavioral change, how this information becomes neurobiologically encoded, and the functional consequences of these changes remain fundamental puzzles relevant to diverse fields from evolutionary biology to the health sciences. Here we explore how insects provide unique opportunities for comparative study of developmental behavioral plasticity. Insects have sophisticated behavior and cognitive abilities, and they are frequently studied in their natural environments, which provides an ecological and adaptive perspective that is often more limited in lab-based vertebrate models. A range of cues, …

Lost In Translation: Simple Steps In Experimental Design Of Neurorehabilitation-Based Research Interventions To Promote Motor Recovery Post-Stroke, Natalia Sánchez, Carolee J. Winstein

Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research

Stroke continues to be a leading cause of disability. Basic neurorehabilitation research is necessary to inform the neuropathophysiology of impaired motor control, and to develop targeted interventions with potential to remediate disability post-stroke. Despite knowledge gained from basic research studies, the effectiveness of researchbased interventions for reducing motor impairment has been no greater than standard of practice interventions. In this perspective, we offer suggestions for overcoming translational barriers integral to experimental design, to augment traditional protocols, and re-route the rehabilitation trajectory toward recovery and away from compensation. First, we suggest that researchers consider modifying task practice schedules to focus on …

Clinical Case Study: The Effects Of Real-Time Iemg Biofeedback On Facial Muscle Activation Patterns In A Child With Congenital Facial Palsy, Alyssa Molina

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Experimental findings are limited concerning efficacious procedures for facial reanimation following persistent idiopathic facial paralysis or paresis. Additional research examining the use of real-time integrated electromyography (iEMG) biofeedback for young children with persistent idiopathic facial paralysis is one approach to further understand the efficacy of electrophysiology biofeedback techniques in facial reanimation for this age group and etiology. iEMG research has applications in interventions for pathology of nerves and muscles affecting animation of the face. The proposed clinical case study will adopt real time iEMG visual biofeedback to facilitate facial reanimation in a preadolescent child. Quantitative measurements will determine orofacial muscle …

Activation Of The Cognitive Control Network Associated With Information Uncertainty, Tingting Wu, Kurt P. Schulz, Jin Fan

Publications and Research

The cognitive control network (CCN) that comprises regions of the frontoparietal network, the cingulo-opercular network, and other sub-cortical regions as core structures is commonly activated by events with an increase in information uncertainty. However, it is not clear whether this CCN activation is associated with both information entropy that represents the information conveyed by the context formed by a sequence of events and the surprise that quantifies the information conveyed by a specific type of event in the context. We manipulated entropy and surprise in this functional magnetic resonance imaging study by varying the probability of occurrence of two types …

Gait And Balance Changes With Investigational Peripheral Nerve Cell Therapy During Deep Brain Stimulation In People With Parkinson’S Disease, Geetanjali Gera, Zain Guduru, Tritia R. Yamasaki, Julie A. Gurwell, Monica Chau, Anna Krotinger, Frederick A. Schmitt, John T. Slevin, Greg A. Gerhardt, Craig G. Van Horne, Jorge E. Quintero

Physical Therapy Faculty Publications

Background: The efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and dopaminergic therapy is known to decrease over time. Hence, a new investigational approach combines implanting autologous injury-activated peripheral nerve grafts (APNG) at the time of bilateral DBS surgery to the globus pallidus interna. Objectives: In a study where APNG was unilaterally implanted into the substantia nigra, we explored the effects on clinical gait and balance assessments over two years in 14 individuals with Parkinson’s disease. Methods: Computerized gait and balance evaluations were performed without medication, and stimulation was in the off state for at least 12 h to best assess the …

Physician Burnout: Stress Within The Health Care System, Aidan Hauser

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

As our nation’s healthcare system expands, more stress and responsibility are placed on our physicians and frontline healthcare workers. The pressures of the daily job often prove extremely damaging to the employee’s mental and physical health. Physician and worker burnout is a growing epidemic that is damaging our care providers more and more every day. Burnout effects not only workers, but all of those surrounding them as well. This plague is not going to be repaired by one single change, but it is clear that many adjustments must be made to reform our healthcare system.

A Stress-Free Strategy To Correct Point Mutations In Patient Ips Cells, Jingli Cai, Elizabeth Kropf, Ya-Ming Hou, Lorraine Iacovitti

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Faculty Papers

When studying patient specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) as a disease model, the ideal control is an isogenic line that has corrected the point mutation, instead of iPS cells from siblings or other healthy subjects. However, repairing a point mutation in iPS cells even with the newly developed CRISPR-Cas9 technique remains difficult and time-consuming. Here we report a strategy that makes the Cas9 “knock-in” methodology both hassle-free and error-free. Instead of selecting a Cas9 recognition site close to the point mutation, we chose a site located in the nearest intron. We constructed a donor template with the fragment …

Response To Correspondence On "Reproducibility Of Crispr-Cas9 Methods For Generation Of Conditional Mouse Alleles: A Multi-Center Evaluation", Channabasavaiah B. Gurumurthy, Aidan R. O'Brien, Rolen M. Quadros, John Adams, Pilar Alcaide, Shinya Ayabe, Johnathan Ballard, Surinder K. Batra, Marie-Claude Beauchamp, Kathleen A. Becker, Guillaume Bernas, David Brough, Francisco Carrillo-Salinas, Wesley Chan, Hanying Chen, Ruby Dawson, Victoria Demambro, Jinke D'Hont, Katharine Dibb, James D. Eudy, Lin Gan, Jing Gao, Amy Gonzales, Anyonya Guntur, Huiping Guo, Donald W. Harms, Anne Harrington, Kathryn E. Hentges, Neil Humphreys, Shiho Imai, Hideshi Ishii, Mizuho Iwama, Eric Jonasch, Michelle Karolak, Bernard Keavney, Nay-Chi Khin, Masamitsu Konno, Yuko Kotani, Yayoi Kunihiro, Imayavaramban Lakshmanan, Catherine Larochelle, Catherine B. Lawrence, Lin Li, Volkhard Lindner, Xian-De Liu, Gloria Lopez-Castejon, Andrew Loudon, Jenna Lowe, Loydie Jerome-Majeweska, Taiji Matsusaka, Hiromi Miura, Yoshiki Miyasaka, Benjamin Morpurgo, Katherine Motyl, Yo-Ichi Nabeshima, Koji Nakade, Toshiaki Nakashiba, Kenichi Nakashima, Yuichi Obata, Sanae Ogiwara, Mariette Ouellet, Leif Oxburgh, Sandra Piltz, Ilka Pinz, Moorthy P. Ponnusamy, David Ray, Ronald J. Redder, Clifford J. Rosen, Nikki Ross, Mark T. Ruhe, Larisa Ryzhova, Ane M. Salvador, Sabrina Shameen Alam, Radislav Sedlacek, Karan Sharma, Chad Smith, Katrien Staes, Lora Starrs, Fumihiro Sugiyama, Satoru Takahashi, Tomohiro Tanaka, Andrew Trafford, Yoshihiro Uno, Leen Vanhoutte, Frederique Vanrockeghem, Brandon J. Willis, Christian S. Wright, Yuko Yamauchi, Xin Yi, Kazuto Yoshimi, Xuesong Zhang, Yu Zhang, Masato Ohtsuka, Satyabrata Das, Daniel J. Garry, Tino Hochepied, Paul Thomas, Jan Parker-Thornburg, Antony D. Adamson, Atsushi Yoshiki, Jean-Francois Schmouth, Andrei Golovko, William R. Thompson, K C Kent Lloyd, Joshua A. Wood, Mitra Cowan, Tomoji Mashimo, Seiya Mizuno, Hao Zhu, Petr Kasparek, Lucy Liaw, Joseph M. Miano, Gaetan Burgio

Journal Articles: Pharmacology & Experimental Neuroscience

No abstract provided.

The Giant Axolotl Genome Uncovers The Evolution, Scaling, And Transcriptional Control Of Complex Gene Loci, Siegfried Schloissnig, Akane Kawaguchi, Sergej Nowoshilow, Francisco Falcon, Leo Otsuki, Pietro Tardivo, Nataliya Timoshevskaya, Melissa C. Keinath, Jeramiah J. Smith, S. Randal Voss, Elly M. Tanaka

Biology Faculty Publications

Vertebrates harbor recognizably orthologous gene complements but vary 100-fold in genome size. How chromosomal organization scales with genome expansion is unclear, and how acute changes in gene regulation, as during axolotl limb regeneration, occur in the context of a vast genome has remained a riddle. Here, we describe the chromosome-scale assembly of the giant, 32 Gb axolotl genome. Hi-C contact data revealed the scaling properties of interphase and mitotic chromosome organization. Analysis of the assembly yielded understanding of the evolution of large, syntenic multigene clusters, including the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) and the functional regulatory landscape of the Fibroblast Growth …

A Mouse Model Of Huntington’S Disease Shows Altered Ultrastructure Of Transverse Tubules In Skeletal Muscle Fibers, Shannon H. Romer, Sabrina Metzger, Kristiana Peraza, Matthew C. Wright, D. Scott Jobe, Long-Sheng Song, Mark M. Rich, Brent D. Foy, Robert J. Talmadge, Andrew A. Voss

Neuroscience, Cell Biology & Physiology Faculty Publications

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a fatal and progressive condition with severe debilitating motor defects and muscle weakness. Although classically recognized as a neurodegenerative disorder, there is increasing evidence of cell autonomous toxicity in skeletal muscle. We recently demonstrated that skeletal muscle fibers from the R6/2 model mouse of HD have a decrease in specific membrane capacitance, suggesting a loss of transverse tubule (t-tubule) membrane in R6/2 muscle. A previous report also indicated that Cav1.1 current was reduced in R6/2 skeletal muscle, suggesting defects in excitation–contraction (EC) coupling. Thus, we hypothesized that a loss and/or disruption of the skeletal muscle t-tubule …

Method Of Intra-Arterial Drug Administration In A Rat: Sex Based Optimization Of Infusion Rate, Sarah J. Messmer, Justin F. Fraser, Keith R. Pennypacker, Jill M. Roberts

Center for Advanced Translational Stroke Science Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Endovascular thrombectomy is the process of removing a blood clot and re-establishing blood flow in patients with emergent large vessel occlusion. The technique provides an opportunity to deliver therapeutics directly to the site of injury. The intra-arterial (IA) route of drug administration in the mouse was developed to bridge the gap between animal stroke treatments and clinical stroke therapy. Here, we adapted the IA method for use in rats, by investigating various flow rates to optimize the IA injection through the internal carotid artery (ICA).

METHODS: Male and female Sprague-Dawley rats (∼4 months of age) were subjected to placement …

Long-Term Impacts Of Acute Stressor Exposure On Locus Coeruleus Function And Anxiety-Like Behavior In Rats, Olga Borodovitsyna

Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Theses and Dissertations

Stress is a physiological state characterized by behavioral arousal that occurs during exposure to harmful or threatening stimuli, and usually facilitates an adaptive behavioral response. The persistence of stress sometimes causes it to become maladaptive, potentially contributing to disease development, including physiological complications with altered neuroendocrine signaling and impaired function of organ systems, and psychological conditions including depression and anxiety. Anxiety disorders in particular are associated with a history of stress and are the most common class of mental disorders, with a lifetime prevalence of 33.7% in the general population. The locus coeruleus (LC) is a major node in the …

Skin And Muscle Receptors Shape Coordinated Fast Feedback Responses In The Upper Limb, Christopher J. Forgaard, Sasha Reschechtko, Paul L. Gribble, J. Andrew Pruszynski

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2021 Elsevier Ltd Despite many real-world examples where skin and muscle receptors must function in concert to support movement control, responses based on these sensory modalities are usually separated from one another in laboratory studies. Proprioception is often considered the domain of muscle receptors, whereas the skin's function is often assumed to be discriminative touch. This distinction understates the extent to which sensory feedback from skin and muscle work together to shape successful movement control. Here we review the functional characteristics and similarities between fast feedback responses of the upper limb originating from muscle stretch and skin slip. We …

Kindergarteners' Symbolic Number Abilities Predict Nonsymbolic Number Abilities And Math Achievement In Grade 1, Nathan T. Lau, Rebecca Merkley, Paul Tremblay, Samuel Zhang, Stefanie De Jesus, Daniel Ansari

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Research has shown that two different, though related, ways of representing magnitude play foundational roles in the development of numerical and mathematical skills: a nonverbal approximate number system and an exact symbolic number system. While there have been numerous studies suggesting that the two systems are important predictors of math achievement, there has been substantial debate regarding whether and how these basic numerical competencies may be developmentally interrelated. Specifically, the causal direction of their relation has been the subject of debate: whether children's approximate number abilities predict later symbolic number abilities (the mapping account) or the other way around (the …

Temporal Dynamics Of Functional Brain States Underlie Cognitive Performance, Hong Gu, Kurt P. Schulz, Jin Fan, Yihong Yang

Publications and Research

The functional organization of the human brain adapts dynamically in response to a rapidly changing environment. However, the relation of these rapid changes in functional organization to cognitive functioning is not well understood. This study used a graph-based time-frame modularity analysis approach to identify temporally recurrent functional configuration patterns in neural responses to an n-back working memory task during fMRI. Working memory load was manipulated to investigate the functional relevance of the identified brain states. Four distinct brain states were defined by the predominant patterns of activation in the task-positive, default-mode, sensorimotor, and visual networks. Associated with escalating working memory …

Mechanisms Of Synthetic Cannabinoids On Cardiovascular Health, Madeleine A. Nelson

Honors Thesis

Cannabinoids encompass natural cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids. While the synthetic cannabinoids interact with the same endogenous system as cannabis, their effects are quite different and poorly understood. In addition to psychological effects that trigger their use, these substances are linked to cardiovascular morbidity. To assess the cardiovascular effect of synthetic cannabinoids, we first tested the hypothesis that intravenous administration of a synthetic cannabinoid would increase blood pressure in conscious rats. Second, we tested the hypothesis that the sympathetic nervous system is involved by injecting a ganglion blocker to see if the cardiovascular response from synthetic cannabinoids would be blocked. Third, …

Activity-Dependent Regulation Of Extracellular Ube3a In A Novel Angelman Syndrome Rat Model, Andie Dodge

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Angelman Syndrome (AS) is a rare genetic and neurologic disorder affecting approximately 1 in every 15,000 people. This disorder is characterized by seizures, absence of speech, motor and cognitive deficits, ataxia, and notably an abnormal happy demeanor with frequent smiling and laughter. A neuron-specific loss of function of the maternal allele of UBE3A, encoding for an E3 ubiquitin ligase, leads to the manifestation of AS. There are currently no cures for AS and few therapeutic options to abate symptoms. Although much investigation is required, research using the null mutation AS mouse model suggests a plausible case for pharmacological intervention.

Major …