Browsing by Subject "Neurosciences"
Now showing items 1-20 of 235
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A Comparative Study of Habitat Complexity, Neuroanatomy, and Cognitive Behavior in Anolis Lizards
(2012)Changing environmental conditions may present substantial challenges to organisms experiencing them. In animals, the fastest way to respond to these changes is often by altering behavior. This ability, called behavioral ... -
A Computational Synthesis of Genes, Behavior, and Evolution Provides Insights into the Molecular Basis of Vocal Learning
(2012)Vocal learning is the ability modify vocal output based on auditory input and is the basis of human speech acquisition. It is shared by few distantly related bird and mammal orders, and is thus very likely to be an example ... -
A Genetic Analysis of the MicroRNA miR-133b in the Mammalian Nervous System
(2011)The development and function of the nervous system relies on complex regulation of gene expression programs. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNAs that have diverse functions in mammalian development and disease. In concert ... -
A New Experimental and Conceptual Approach to Understanding the Ventral Tegmental Area and Its Regulation of Motivated Behaviors
(2021)Motivated behaviors are essential for the survival and maintenance of life. The ventral tegmental area (VTA) is a midbrain region that has been implicated in motivational processes, such as seeking reward and ... -
A Novel Experimental Method for Measuring Proactive and Reactive Responses to Threat and an Examination of Their Personality and Neural Correlates
(2015)The goal of this dissertation is to characterize goal directed proactive behavioral responses to threat as well as reactive responses to threat exposure, and to identify the neural and personality correlates of individual ... -
A Novel Function of Giant Ankyrin-G in Promoting the Formation of Somatodendritic GABAA Receptor Synaptogenesis
(2014)The formation and retention of distinct membrane domains in the fluidic membrane bilayer is the key process in establishing spatial organization for mediating physiological functions in metazoans. The spectrin-ankyrin network ... -
A Pathway from the Midbrain to the Striatum is Critical to Multiple Forms of Vocal Learning and Modification in the Songbird
(2017)Many of the skills we value most as humans, such as speech and learning to play musical instruments, are learned in the absence of external reinforcement. However, the model systems most commonly used to study motor learning ... -
A Shared Neural Substrate for Diverse General Anesthetics and Sleep
(2019)Ever since the initial discovery of general anesthetics almost 170 years ago, how general anesthesia (GA) induces loss of consciousness remains a century-long mystery. In addition, whether diverse anesthetic drugs and sleep ... -
A Three-Molecule Model of Structural Plasticity: the Role of the Rho family GTPases in Local Biochemical Computation in Dendrites
(2015)It has long been appreciated that the process of learning might invoke a physical change in the brain, establishing a lasting trace of experience. Recent evidence has revealed that this change manifests, at least in part, ... -
Advances in Color Science: From Retina to Behavior (vol 30, pg 14955, 2010)
(JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, 2010-12-08) -
Affective Modulation of Executive Control
(2013)Emotions are pervasive in daily life, and a rich literature has documented how emotional stimuli and events disrupt ongoing processing and place heightened demands on control. Yet the executive control mechanisms ... -
Age-Related Differences in Mnemonic Neural Representations: Perceptual and Semantic Contributions
(2020)Preliminary evidence demonstrates that age-related differences in episodic memory performance become greater in tasks that have greater perceptual demands (e.g., task stimuli are visually degraded), but are attenuated in ... -
Amyloid Precursor Protein-Dependent and -Independent Mechanisms in Hypoxia-Induced Axonopathy
(2012)Hypoxia is a profound stressor of the central nervous system implicated in numerous neurodegenerative diseases. While it is increasingly evident that the early effects of hypoxia cause impairment at the level of the axon, ... -
An Actor-Critic Circuit in the Songbird Enables Vocal Learning
(2020)The ability to learn and to modify complex vocal sequences requires extensive practice coupled with performance evaluation through auditory feedback. An efficient solution to the challenge of vocal learning, stemming from ... -
An in vitro model of the brain tissue reaction to chronically implanted recording electrodes reveals essential roles for serum and bFGF in glial scarring
(2009)Chronically implanted recording electrode arrays linked to prosthetics have the potential to make positive impacts on patients suffering from full or partial paralysis [1;2]. Such arrays are implanted into the patient's ... -
Analysis of Purkinje Cell Responses in the Oculomotor Vermis during the Execution of Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements
(2016)Smooth pursuit eye movements are movements of the eyes that are used to foveate moving objects. Their precision and adaptation is believed to depend on a constellation of sites across the cerebellum, but only one region’s ... -
Assessing Neurocognitive Impairment in HIV-positive Patients: The Sensitivity and Specificity of the CogState Brief Battery
(2012)Objective: The prevalence of cognitive impairment in HIV-positive patients is estimated to be 39% in Uganda [1]. Despite the high prevalence of impairment, routine HIV management in Uganda does not include neuropsychological ... -
Assessing Nucleocytoplasmic transport in Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 7
(2021)AbstractSCA7 is an autosomal dominant CAG/polyglutamine trinucleotide repeat expansion disease that accounts for ~4% of all spinocerebellar ataxias in the USA. In addition to atrophy of the cerebellar cortex and brainstem, ... -
Basal Ganglia Regulation of Motivated Behaviors
(2015)Finding and consuming food and water are among the most critical functions for an animal's survival. Food seeking (e.g., exploration and approach) and consummatory (e.g., licking, chewing, swallowing) behaviors are usually ...
