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Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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The effects of 40 Hz gamma flicker stimulation on spatial memory, perceptual discrimination, and recall

2022-08 , Salen, Ashley

The rising prevalence of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), which leads to progressively deteriorating memory and thinking skills is alarming. A preliminary data analysis was performed to predict potential behavioral changes that may occur in cognitively healthy older adults between conditions as a result of using the flicker for 8 weeks. Although the preliminary data analysis has not yet yielded any statistically significant effects induced by the 40 Hz gamma flicker on the memory of the flicker group compared to the control group, it may provide insight into what the results could look like further down the line. Based on graph analysis, it could be predicted that the flicker group may have fewer spatial memory deficits.

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The Effects of Methamphetamine and Ovarian Hormones on Dopamine Receptor Binding Density in the Female Rat Brain

2022-05 , Rhangos, Isabella

Methamphetamine (METH) increases sexual motivation in ovariectomized female rats via direct influence on the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway. METH’s effects on dopaminergic activity are dependent on the coadministration of ovarian hormones. In order to determine the mechanism through which METH stimulates the dopaminergic pathway, an analysis was performed on autoradiograms collected from the key mesolimbic brain regions of female rats: the medial amygdala (MeA), ventromedial nucleus (VMN), and the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). The dopaminergic receptor binding densities of both D1- and D2-type receptors were measured and compared between the groups of rats who received METH, ovarian hormones, METH and ovarian hormones, or a control injection. This analysis concluded that METH and ovarian hormone administration do not significantly change the number of bound dopaminergic receptors in any of the analyzed brain regions. The analysis also determined that there is potential lateralization of the MeA, as well as D2-autoreceptor activity in the MeA. These findings are significant in that they indicate that METH and ovarian hormone administration are activating the dopaminergic pathway, but that the change is occurring at a mechanistic location other than the number of bound dopaminergic receptors.

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Effects of Various Cognitive Processes on Quasi-Periodic Patterns

2019-05 , Abdulhameed, Sarah Qussai

Quasi Periodic Patterns are a way of finding reoccurring patterns in brain imaging data. In this experiment, researchers were interested in examining how similar QPPs were in various cognitive processes. In order to execute this, researchers put participants in an fMRI scanner and obtain functional brain images as they conducted a 0-back task, a 2-back task, flanker task, and a resting state scan. It was hypothesized that 0-back and 2-back brain activity would be most similar, then flanker brain activity will be similar to these, and the resting state scan would not be similar to any of the tasks. In addition, it was hypothesized that the 2-back QPP will have greater correlation strength and frequency than the 0-back QPP. A cluster analysis was executed to obtain an average template for each of the conditions which was compared between each other to obtain an index of similarity. Future work should include different tasks that are dependent on other cognitive processes to see the effects on their QPPs.

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Relating Neural Mechanisms for Learning to Instructional Techniques in Online Learning Environments

2022-05 , Joshi, Jenna Gerdes

The virtual learning experience is fundamentally different from the traditional classroom because of the challenges of maintaining learners’ attention amid distractions in their environment. This study aims to study how the established Nine Events of Instruction can be most effective at maintaining engagement in learners in the online classroom. To test this, participants watched a 1-hour course on Human-Computer Interaction while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, rated how engaged they felt with the course, and were tested on the information they learned later. The participants then came back for a second session where they watched the same course and used a slider mouse scale to rate their engagement with the videos. Β-values were regressed from the fMRI data after being processed and analyzed extensively. Results revealed that brain activation in the lateral occipito-temporal cortex and ventral attention network occurred during times that participants reported increasing engagement. These regions of brain activation, among others, were also applied to which of the Events of Instruction were being employed by the instructor at that time. This experiment will link successful learning and cognitive engagement to the Nine Events of Instruction and will be applied to improve the virtual classroom experience in the near future.

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Minority Stress, Sleep Quality, and Episodic Memory Performance in LGBTQ+ Adults

2021-05 , Campbell, Jessica E.

The main goal of this study was to investigate the impact of minority stress on the sleep quality and episodic memory performance of LGBTQ+ adults. This was done by collecting data from 70 participants (n = 39 LGBTQ+; n = 31 heterosexual) measuring sleep quality, minority and generalized stress, and episodic memory performance. The results found that generalized stress does act as a mediating variable potentially acting as a mechanism explaining the impact of sleep quality on memory consolidation.

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How Stress Affects Concurrent Learning and Memory Integration during Decision-Making

2022-05 , Beveridge, Elizabeth

Spatial navigation presents as a realistic way to measure decision-making as acute stress has been shown to disrupt the hippocampal network involved in planning during navigation (Gagnon et al., 2018) and encourage the use of familiar routes over short-cuts (Brown et al., 2020). This planning during decision-making requires both memory retrieval and memory integration, the placement of weight on recalled past memories (He et al., 2022). While existing literature suggests acute stress impairs memory retrieval, there is no research on how stress affects memory integration during decision-making. To fill this critical gap in the literature, this study exposes half of its participants to stress via an electrical shock and uses a spatial navigation paradigm to measure how stress affects memory integration during decision-making. All 82 participants, divided roughly equally between gender and condition, navigated a virtual environment searching for goal objects. For each trial, the participant was prompted to decide between a familiar route with a lower payout or an unfamiliar route with a higher payout. For each participant, we used computational modeling to measure the degree of memory integration. We suspect that since stress impairs memory retrieval and decreases the use of shortcuts in spatial navigation, the degree of memory integration will decrease in the stress group. As hypothesized, participants in the stress group had significantly decreased memory integration than individuals in the control group (p=0.002), both expanding and validating the existing literature that acute stress impacts the prospective planning in decision-making during spatial navigation.

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Effects of Acute and Chronic Inflammation on Vasopressin Expression in the Paraventricular Nucleus of the Hypothalamus

2019-12 , Patel, Shivany

Inflammation can lead to a suite of behavioral changes known as sickness behaviors, which have been implicated in the etiology of chronic inflammatory disease. Here, we examine the role of acute and chronic induction of inflammation on vasopressin (AVP) expression in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN) of female mice. To test, adult female C57B6/J mice were injected with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) at two different dosages and schedules to induce acute (1.0mg/kg, once) and chronic (0.25mg/kg LPS, eight times) inflammatory responses. The acute dose has previously been demonstrated to induce sickness behaviors, as measured by the open field test and a social interaction test; however, these measures were unaffected by the chronic administration of LPS. AVP mRNA expression in the PVN was measured using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) and fluorescent microscopy. Both the acute and chronic administration of LPS resulted in an increase in PVN AVP expression without a change in the area of this expression. This increase in AVP in the PVN occurred despite the lack of sickness behavior, suggesting that further work is necessary to characterize the role of AVP in the PVN in these chronic and acute inflammatory responses.

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