Biological Psychology Commons^™

Testing An Overtraining Protocol For Fear Learning In Humans, Gordon M. Haskell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Successful regulation of fear memories is a fundamental tenet to the exposure-based therapies often employed by mental health professionals for individuals with PTSD, phobias, and other anxiety disorders. Consequently, the efficacy of these treatment methodologies is largely dependent on the strength of the fear memory, as stronger memories are often characterized by an increased resistance to extinction and heightened fear recovery. However, there is little consensus within the scientific community regarding how to effectively maximize fear memory strength in human studies, and the literature exploring the impact of variability in acquisition parameters on memory strength is sparse. Here, we tested ...

Cross-Modal Perception Of Identity By Sound And Taste In Bottlenose Dolphins, Jason N. Bruck, Sam F. Walmsley, Vincent M. Janik

Faculty Publications

While studies have demonstrated concept formation in animals, only humans are known to label concepts to use them in mental simulations or predictions. To investigate whether other animals use labels comparably, we studied cross-modal, individual recognition in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) that use signature whistles as labels for conspecifics in their own communication. First, we tested whether dolphins could use gustatory stimuli and found that they could distinguish between water and urine samples, as well as between urine from familiar and unfamiliar individuals. Then, we paired playbacks of signature whistles of known animals with urine samples from either the same ...

Differential Neural Correlates Underlying Different Cognitive Control Strategies And Their Relationship With The Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, Carroll Bentley

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Impulsivity is defined as a rapid unplanned action to a stimulus, where the person does not consider the consequences of their actions (Moeller et al., 2001). Various measurement techniques exist in the study of impulsivity and include self-report, behavioral and physiological measures. This breadth of measurement techniques affords researchers the opportunity to understand what is likely a multifaceted nature of this construct. Previous literature shows mixed results between the relationship of the three measures. The present study seeks to add clarity between the three different modalities of measuring impulsivity. To address this relationship, an undergraduate sample (n = 171) completed three ...

Utilization Of The Fundamental Attribution Error With Increased Immune System Inflammation, John Odom

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Immune system inflammation is associated with sickness behavior, depressive mood, and alteration of decision-making processes. Because of these cognitive effects, inflammation may also lead to increased use of heuristics, for example the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE). In the current research, inflammation was experimentally increased using the influenza vaccine, with participants receiving either the vaccine or a placebo injection and completing a measure that tests for the FAE. There were no significant differences between the two conditions regarding the number of personal, situational, or overall attributions made by the participants in the measure that would indicate use of the FAE. However ...

Barriers To Care, Depressive Symptoms, And Moderating Factors Among Patients With Esrd, Amarachukwu O. Nwangwu

Honors Theses

End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is the fifth and final stage of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and has been reported to have the highest prevalence rate in the United States, with about 2,242 cases per million in the total population in 2017 (Johansen et al., 2021). Current studies document a high prevalence of depression among patients with ESRD which may lead to increased mortality (Shirazian et al., 2017). Additionally, barriers in access to care, which may be understood as the barriers that prevent individuals from seeking mental health services, has been linked to increased levels of undertreatment (Clement et al ...

What Does “Avoidance Mode” Feel Like? The Association Between Avoidance Awareness And Negative Affect In The Moment, Mamie Ziegler

Honors Theses

For students in an academic setting, task avoidance is a common behavioral strategy used to cope with the unpleasant emotions associated with schoolwork and completing assignments. However, when this form of behavioral avoidance becomes a pattern, it has the potential to lead to negative long-term consequences–such as worse academic outcomes and increased stress. To counteract maladaptive behaviors such as task avoidance, a certain level of self-awareness of such behaviors may be necessary–even if this awareness leads to more negative emotions at first. To analyze the relationship between student task avoidance and emotions, the following study utilizes ecological momentary ...

Opioid-Induced Respiratory Depression In C57bl/6j Mice: The Role Of Prefrontal Cortex Cholinergic Transmission In The Wakefulness Stimulus For Breathing, Wilton Sun

Select or Award-Winning Individual Scholarship

Opioid-induced respiratory depression (OIRD) is the primary cause of death from opioid overdose. Opioids depress breathing by diminishing the wakefulness stimulus for breathing in humans and mice. Cholinergic transmission in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) promotes cortical EEG activation, increases wakefulness, and stimulates breathing. However, no previous studies have tested whether increasing cholinergic transmission in the PFC can mitigate respiratory depression caused by systemically administered fentanyl in mice. The series of studies comprising this honors thesis is split into two phases. The first phase included a concentration response study evaluating the effects of fentanyl on breathing in C57BL/6J mice breathing ...

Does Chronic Risperidone Administration Affect Food Reinforcement In Adulthood In Mice?, Francis Torres, Paul Soto

LSU Master's Theses

Second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) increase weight gain and food consumption in humans and non-human animals. It has been speculated that SGAs increase the reinforcing effects of food, which increases food consumption and drives weight gain. The current study evaluated the effects of risperidone on sucrose reinforcement in male and female C57BL/6J mice using economic demand assessments. Demand for sucrose was measured by varying the fixed ratio (FR) value required to produce sucrose delivery across experimental sessions using five FR values: 1, 5, 15, 30, and 45. The effects of acute risperidone administration on demand for sucrose were first assessed by ...

Classical Conditioning Of Cognitive States, Arthur Burns

Neuroscience Honors Papers

Classical conditioning has been a fundamental concept and practice throughout the history of psychology. While classical conditioning traditionally seeks to elicit target behaviors in correlation to specific stimuli, we sought to do the same with cognitive states in place of behaviors. Specifically, we wanted to determine the effectiveness of conditioning states of cognitive arousal in human participants in conjunction with cues presented in a designed learning task. We designed a cognitive task specifically for this research, referred to as “the Tone Pitching Task”, which utilized a combination of working memory and mental processing in order to elicit cognitive arousal and ...

Borderline Personality Symptoms And Relationship Threat: The Moderating Role Of Perceived Parental Rejection, Elsa Baumgartner

Student Research Submissions

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often perceive relationship threats more intensely, resulting in increased emotional reactivity. However, this link has never been examined with physiological measures in “real time,” nor have reports of perceived parental rejection ever been investigated as a potential moderator of this link. To fill this gap, the present study induced romantic relationship threat, after which participants completed an emotional reactivity task while electroencephalography data were recorded. Results reveal that higher levels of BPD features were associated with increased emotional reactivity, indicated by larger late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, to negative stimuli in the face of ...

Substance Use Disorders, Cognitive Dysfunction, And Neurodivergence In Emerging Adulthood, David Posada, Jordyn Hebert

Symposium of Student Scholars

Substance Use Disorders, Cognitive Dysfunction, and Neurodivergence in Emerging Adulthood

Posada, D., Herbert, J., Weingast, L., Holliday, E.

Cognitive functioning in college students with substance use disorders (SUD) has been widely researched, however, discussions have largely concentrated on executive functions (EF) such as working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. Literature on the relationship between cognitive dysfunction and SUD has largely underreported the influence of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADD/ADHD) and other neurodivergent characteristics. The current review explores the state of the literature on the relationship between neurodivergence, cognitive dysfunction, and SUD in emerging adulthood. More specifically, it speculates whether ...

Adapting Small Unmanned Aerial Systems For Behavioral Research With Coastal Marine Mammals, Eric Angel Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Marine mammals inhabit aquatic worlds where their subsurface behavior, cryptic surface profiles, and movements make them difficult to study. New tools are needed to study coastal marine mammals in a world increasing impacted by climate change related shifts in weather and animal distribution patterns. Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are important remote-sensing tools for studying a range of wildlife including terrestrial and aquatic flora and fauna. These systems offer flexible platforms for adding sensor packages needed for different applications, for example, most are equipped with high-resolution cameras and GPS sensors. The vantage point from an aerial platform dramatically improves the ability ...

Remodelling Criminal Insanity: Exploring Philosophical, Legal, And Medical Premises Of The Medical Model Used In Norwegian Law, Linda Gröning, Unn K. Haukvik, Stephen J. Morse, Susanna Radovic

Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law

This paper clarifies the conceptual space of discussion of legal insanity by considering the virtues of the ‘medical model’ model that has been used in Norway for almost a century. The medical model identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder, and especially with psychosis, without any requirement that the disorder causally influenced the commission of the crime. We explore the medical model from a transdisciplinary perspective and show how it can be utilised to systematise and reconsider the central philosophical, legal and medical premises involved in the insanity debate. A key concern is how recent transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches to psychosis ...

The Evolution Of Quantitative Sensitivity, Margaret A H Bryer, Sarah E. Koopman, Jessica F. Cantlon, Steven T. Piantadosi, Evan L. Maclean, Joseph M. Baker, Michael J. Beran, Sarah M. Jones, Kerry E. Jordan, Salif Mahamane, Andreas Nieder, Bonnie M. Perdue, Friederike Range, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Masaki Tomonaga, Dorottya Ujfalussy, Jennifer Vonk

Jeffrey Stevens Papers & Publications

The ability to represent approximate quantities appears to be phylogenetically widespread, but the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms favouring this ability remain unknown. We analysed quantity discrimination data from 672 subjects across 33 bird and mammal species, using a novel Bayesian model that combined phylogenetic regression with a model of number psychophysics and random effect components. This allowed us to combine data from 49 studies and calculate the Weber fraction (a measure of quantity representation precision) for each species. We then examined which cognitive, socioecological and biological factors were related to variance in Weber fraction. We found contributions of phylogeny ...

Sleep And Cardiovascular Reactivity To An Acute Virtual Stressor, Alaina Grace Tiani

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Inappropriate response and magnitude of cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stress is a proposed mechanism through which environmental stressors are linked with poor cardiovascular health outcomes (Chida & Steptoe, 2010; Krantz & Manuck, 1984). Studies of reactivity to various laboratory tasks commonly control for factors known to influence CVR such as smoking, medication use, caffeine intake, and BMI; however, few have considered the influence of sleep on CVR. In order to determine whether sleep characteristics need to be assessed and considered in studies of CVR, this study aimed to examine the association between indices of sleep quality and the magnitude and patterning of CVR to an acute virtual stress task protocol. Fifty undergraduate participants were recruited to complete three nights of sleep measurement via actigraphy, followed by a virtual stress task ...

Does Having Siblings Affect Caretaking Responses To Infants?, Kaitlin Rose Duskin

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Infant facial cues affect a variety of caretaking-related responses in adults. These effects have primarily been explored as they relate to parental care, however infants receive care from others who are not their parents and it would be important for any caregiver, regardless of parental status, to respond to infant cues effectively. Because siblings often fulfill a caregiver role in the home, this study investigated whether having siblings, younger siblings in particular, influences the way in which adults respond to infant cues. Contrary to my predictions, the findings in this study indicate that having siblings does not influence how rewarding ...

Sentience In Decapods: Difficulties To Surmount, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

In the target article Crump et al. present 8 criteria to assess whether decapods experience pain. Four of these -- sensory integration, motivational trade-offs, flexible self-protection, and associative learning -- could be used to assess sentience in general. In this commentary I discuss difficulties with using these criteria to provide evidence of sentience in decapods, particularly if this evidence is to change public opinion and policies. These difficulties are lack of evidence, the potential to eventually explain the neurobiological basis of the behaviors chosen as criteria, thereby eliminating any explanatory work for sentience, and the reluctance to bring animals that are not ...

Integrating Interpersonal Neurobiology In Healthcare Leadership And Organizations, Lynn Redenbach

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is an interdisciplinary, science-based field that seeks to understand human reality including the nature of mind, brain, and relationships. IPNB has been used extensively by mental health practitioners as well as child development and parenting experts. While practitioners and scholars have described ways that IPNB can be used in leadership and organizations, there has been no systematic inquiry into the practical and phenomenological experience of this application. IPNB offers an alternative to dominant models of care and leading in healthcare settings and fields, which are characterized by disconnection, objectification, and separation. It offers a relationally centered approach ...

The Influence Of Emotion Regulation And Neural Cognitive Control On Distress Tolerance, Alicia L. Milam

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Tolerance of negative emotions has been associated with transdiagnostic negative mental health outcomes. Theory and research implicate emotion regulation and cognitive control as factors in tolerance of negative emotions. But their unique contributions to tolerance of negative emotions and interdependency have been unclear due to methodological limitations. This study aimed to explicate cognitive and emotional factors affecting distress tolerance in a non-clinical sample of emerging adults. Undergraduate psychology students completed self-report measures of emotion regulation ability and tolerance of negative emotions. The N2 ERP component elicited by a Go-NoGo task was also used as a neurophysiological marker of cognitive control ...

Social Justice Approaches To Cognitive, Emotional, And Language Development During Childhood And Adolescence, Angélique M. Blackburn

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

With contemporary events that have spotlighted social injustices, including the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States and the COVID-19 pandemic, any discussion of child development should take into account the diverse experiences of children facing injustice. In this article, I focus on social justice as it pertains to child development and how this topic has been addressed in literature targeted at students of child development theory. I focus on the contribution of two recent books (Anthis, 2020; De Houwer, 2021) within the greater context of reviewing literature regarding social inequities in cognitive, emotional, and language development. Anthis (2020 ...