Biological Psychology Commons^™

Multidimensional Approach To Comparative Avian Visual Systems, Bret Alan Moore

Open Access Dissertations

Since the birth of visual ecology, comparative studies on how birds see their world have been limited to a small number of species and tended to focus on a single visual trait. This approach has constrained our ability to understand the diversity and evolution of the avian visual system. The goal of this dissertation was to characterize multiple visual dimensions on bird groups that are highly speciouse (e.g., Passeriformes), and test some hypotheses and predictions, using modern comparative tools, on the relationship between different visual traits and their association with visual information sampling behaviors. First, I developed a novel method …

Differential Effects Of Intermittent Versus Continuous Haloperidol Treatment Throughout Adolescence On Haloperidol Sensitization And Social Behavior In Adulthood, Jun Gao, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Animal work on the behavioral effects of antipsychotic treatment suggests that different dosing regimens could affect drug sensitivity differently, with an intermittent treatment regimen tending to cause a sensitization effect, while a continuous treatment causing a tolerance. In this study, we explored how haloperidol (HAL) sensitization induced throughout adolescence and tested in adulthood was differentially impacted by these two dosing regimens in the conditioned avoidance response (CAR) test.We also examined howthese two dosing regiments affected social interaction and social memory in adulthood. Male adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with HAL via either osmotic minipump(HAL-0.25 CONT; 0.25mgkg⁻¹ day⁻¹, …

Intergeniculate Leaflet Lesions Result In Differential Activation Of Brain Regions Following The Presentation Of Photic Stimuli In Nile Grass Rats, Andrew J. Gall, Lily Yan, Laura Smale, Antonio A. Nunez

Faculty Publications

The intergeniculate leaflet (IGL) plays an important role in the entrainment of circadian rhythms and the mediation of acute behavioral responses to light (i.e., masking). Recently, we reported that IGL lesions in diurnal grass rats result in a reversal in masking responses to light as compared to controls. Here, we used Fos as a marker of neural activation to examine the mechanisms by which the IGL may influence this masking effect of light in grass rats. Specifically, we examined the patterns of Fos activation in retinorecipient areas and in brain regions that receive IGL inputs following 1-h light pulses given …

Bursts And Heavy Tails In Temporal And Sequential Dynamics Of Foraging Decisions, Kanghoon Jung, Hyeran Jang, Jerald D. D. Kralik, Jaeseung Jeong

Dartmouth Scholarship

A fundamental understanding of behavior requires predicting when and what an individual will choose. However, the actual temporal and sequential dynamics of successive choices made among multiple alternatives remain unclear. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that there is a general bursting property in both the timing and sequential patterns of foraging decisions. We conducted a foraging experiment in which rats chose among four different foods over a continuous two-week time period. Regarding when choices were made, we found bursts of rapidly occurring actions, separated by time-varying inactive periods, partially based on a circadian rhythm. Regarding what was …

Interactions With Horses Is Associated With Higher Mindfulness And Heart Rate Variability And Lower Electrodermal Response In College Students, Sarah Mary Wach

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

A wealth of research has revealed psychological and physiological benefits of interactions with animals. As yet, research is limited to smaller animals such as dogs and cats and has not examined the benefits of human-horse interactions. The present study examined the effects of video-simulated human-horse interactions compared with simulated interactions with a car and a person on state mindfulness and physiological arousal. The relationship between trait mindfulness and horse experience was also examined. Undergraduate students with (n = 16) and without experience with horses (n = 26) were recruited with the exclusion criteria of a fear of horses. …

The Effect Of Acute Lps-Induced Immune Activation And Brain Insulin Signaling Disruption In A Diabetic Model Of Alzheimer's Disease, Andrew Scott Murtishaw

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder marked by progressive cognitive impairments and pathological hallmarks that include amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuronal loss. Several well-known mutations exist that lead to early-onset familial AD (fAD). However, these cases only account for a small percentage of total AD cases. The vast majority of AD cases are sporadic in origin (sAD) and are less clearly influenced by a single mutation but rather some combination of genetic and environmental risk.

The etiology of sAD remains unclear but numerous risk factors have been identified that increase the chance of developing AD. Among these risk …

Implicit Theories Of Intelligence And Learning A Novel Mathematics Task, Nathan Oehme Rudig

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The social-cognitive model of motivation states that students adopt a theory of the nature of intelligence that guides their goals in academia and their responses to academic setbacks. Students who believe intelligence is an unchanging entity within them are more likely to adopt goals to display high ability, hide low ability, and respond helplessly to failed schoolwork. Conversely, a student who believes intelligence is a measure of effort and persistence will be motivated to gather knowledge and acquire new skills. The current study investigated the role theories of intelligence play in the field of mathematics understanding. In two experiments, participants …

Interaction Among Gustation, Olfaction, And Vision In Flavor Identification, Michael J. Lauth

Symposium

Even though the senses of taste, smell, and sight are distinct, there is a significant overlap among them in our perceptions of objects that helps us understand and differentiate the world. Everyone has experienced, when his or her nose gets congested, that his or her sense of taste changes as well. Many individuals do not equally understand the top-down processing with taste when someone sees objects they are about to eat. In the replicated study by our principle investigator, a random convenience sample of young adults (n=162) were recruited and tested to determine if they could taste four Jelly Belly …

The Development Of Sleep-Wake Rhythms And The Search For Elemental Circuits In The Infant Brain, Mark S. Blumberg, Andrew J. Gall, William D. Todd

Faculty Publications

Despite the predominance of sleep in early infancy, developmental science has yet to play a major role in shaping concepts and theories about sleep and its associated ultradian and circadian rhythms. Here we argue that developmental analyses help us to elucidate the relative contributions of the brainstem and forebrain to sleep-wake control and to dissect the neural components of sleep-wake rhythms. Developmental analysis also makes it clear that sleep-wake processes in infants are the foundation for those of adults. For example, the infant brainstem alone contains a fundamental sleep-wake circuit that is sufficient to produce transitions among wakefulness, quiet sleep, …

Attenuating The Attentional Blink And Its Consequences: Support For The Wyble-Bowman-Nieuwenstien Model, Samantha Riane Debes

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

When participants are asked to detect two targets (T1 and T2) in a stream of rapidly presented visual stimuli, T2 accuracy decreases when it follows T1 by 200 ms to 500 ms, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). Researchers have been attempting to attenuate the AB through experimental manipulations in order to understand temporal processing in the visual domain. Studies that have successfully attenuated the blink have often (but not always) done so using a concurrent task. One current model of visual temporal attention, the Wyble-Bowman-Nieuwenstien model (2009) suggests that a byproduct of the attenuation of the attentional …

Evolutionary Pressures On Primate Intertemporal Choice, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

From finding food to choosing mates, animals must make intertemporal choices that involve fitness benefits available at different times. Species vary dramatically in their willingness to wait for delayed rewards. Why does this variation across species exist? An adaptive approach to intertemporal choice suggests that time preferences should reflect the temporal problems faced in a species' environment. Here, I use phylogenetic regression to test whether allometric factors (relating to body size), relative brain size, and social group size predict how long 13 primate species will wait in laboratory intertemporal choice tasks. Controlling for phylogeny, a composite allometric factor that includes …

The Effect Of Early Life Stress On Methamphetamine Damage In The Striatum, Emily Hensleigh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Methamphetamine (METH) abuse impacts the global economy through costs associated with drug enforcement, emergency room visits, and treatment. Hyperthermia is a leading cause of METH induced emergency room visits and may lead to neural damage. Previous research has demonstrated early life stress, such as childhood abuse, increases the likelihood of developing a substance abuse disorder. However, the effects of early life stress on neuronal damage induced by chronic METH administration are unknown. We aimed to elucidate the effects of early life stress on METH induced dopamine damage in the striatum. Animals were separated three hours per day during the first …

An Animal Model Of The Motivational Symptoms Of Depression: Testing The Antidepressant Desipramine On An Effort-Related Choice Task, Samantha L. Collins

Honors Scholar Theses

Patients with depression, schizophrenia, and other related disorders often show effort-related motivational symptoms such as anergia, psychomotor slowing, lassitude, and fatigue. Several studies have indicated that dopamine (DA) within the nucleus accumbens (NAc) is involved in the regulation of effort-related behavior. Interference with NAc DA alters response allocation in effort related choice procedures, biasing animals towards the alterative that can be obtained with minimal effort. Previous studies have shown that administration of the vesicular monoamine transporter-2 (VMAT-2) inhibitor tetrabenazine (TBZ) shifts behavior in rats responding on the FR5/chow choice procedure causing a decrease in lever pressing and a compensatory increase …

Role Of The Ventral Tegmental Area And Ventral Tegmental Area Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors In The Incentive Amplifying Effect Of Nicotine, Ashley B. Sheppard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Nicotine has multiple behavioral effects as a result of its action in the central nervous system. Nicotine strengthens the behaviors that lead to nicotine administration (primary reinforcement), and this effect of nicotine depends on mesotelencephalic systems of the brain that are critical to goal directed behavior, reward, and reinforcement. Nicotine also serves as a ‘reinforcement enhancer’ – drug administration enhances behaviors that lead to other drug and nondrug reinforcers. Although the reinforcement enhancing effects of nicotine may promote tobacco use in the face of associated negative health outcomes, the neuroanatomical systems that mediate this effect of nicotine have never been …

Neuromodulation Therapy Mitigates Heart Failure Induced Hippocampal Damage, Timothy P. Diperi

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States. Nearly half of the people diagnosed with heart failure (HF) die within 5 years of diagnosis. Brain abnormalities secondary to CVD have been observed in many discrete regions, including the hippocampus. Nearly 25% of patients with CVD also have major depressive disorder (MDD), and hippocampal dysfunction is a characteristic of both diseases. In this study, the hippocampus and an area of the hippocampal formation, the dentate gyrus (DG), were studied in a canine model of HF. Using this canine HF model previously, we have determined that myocardial …

Behavioral Sensitization Following Concurrent Exposure To Mephedrone And D-Amphetamine In Female Mice, Michael D. Berquist Ii, M. Melissa Peet, Lisa Baker

Research and Creative Activities Poster Day

Introduction

• Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone) is an active constituent of the illicit designer drugs commonly known as “bath salts”. In recent years, the recreational use and abuse of mephedrone and related synthetic methcathinones have dramatically increased in popularity in the U.S. and U. K. (e.g., Dybdal-Hargreaves et al., 2013; Winstock et al., 2010).

• Mephedrone consumption is associated with a number of adverse side effects such as palpitations, bruxism, agitation (Winstock et al., 2011; Wood et al., 2010; Dargan et al., 2010), paranoia, hallucinations, aggressive/violent behavior, excited delirium, and psychosis (Ross et al., 2012).

• Mephedrone may facilitate deleterious effects of other drugs of …

No Two Can Be Alike, Harry Whitaker, Leah Piggott, Nicoletta Fraire, Emily Depetro, Casey Pernaski

Poster Sessions

No abstract provided.

Visual Search And Attention In Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata): Associative Cuing And Sequential Priming, Kazuhiro Goto, Alan B. Bond, Marianna Burks, Alan C. Kamil

Alan Bond Publications

Visual search for complex natural targets requires focal attention, either cued by predictive stimulus associations or primed by a representation of the most recently detected target. Because both processes can focus visual attention, cuing and priming were compared in an operant search task to evaluate their relative impacts on performance and to determine the nature of their interaction in combined treatments. Blue jays were trained to search for pairs of alternative targets among distractors. Informative or ambiguous color cues were provided before each trial, and targets were presented either in homogeneous blocked sequences or in constrained random order. Initial task …

Long-Lasting Sensitization Induced By Repeated Risperidone Treatment In Adolescent Sprague-Dawley Rats: A Possible D2 Receptor Mediated Phenomenon?, Jing Qiao, Jun Gao, Qing Shu, Qinglin Zhang, Gang Hu, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Rationale Risperidone use in children and adolescents for the treatment of various neuropsychiatric disorders (e.g., schizophrenia, autism, disruptive behavior, etc.) has increased substantially in recent decades. However, its long-term effect on the brain and behavioral functions is not well understood. Objective The present study investigated how a short-term risperidone treatment in adolescence impacts antipsychotic response in adulthood in the conditioned avoidance response and phencyclidine (PCP)-induced hyperlocomotion tests. Methods Male adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats (postnatal days [P] 40–44 or 43–48) were first treated with risperidone (0.3, 0.5, or 1.0 mg/kg, subcutaneously (sc)) and tested in the conditioned avoidance or PCP (3.2 mg/kg, …

Direct And Relational Representation During Transitive List Linking In Pinyon Jays (Gymnorhinus Cyanocephalus), Cynthia Wei, Alan Kamil, Alan B. Bond

Alan Bond Publications

The authors used the list-linking procedure (Treichler & Van Tilburg, 1996) to explore the processes by which animals assemble cognitive structures from fragmentary and often contradictory data. Pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) were trained to a high level of accuracy on two implicit transitive lists. They were then given linkage training on the single pair that linked the two lists into a composite, 10-item hierarchy. Following linkage training, the birds were tested on nonadjacent probe pairs drawn both from within (B-D and 2–4) and between (D-1, E-2, B-2, C-3) each original list. Linkage training resulted in a significant transitory disruption in …