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40 Hz Repetitive Visual Stimulation as an Intervention in Fear Extinction in Rats
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/37237e0c-0c43-437c-8ba4-8ce86056fb1c/thumb/128.jpgRepetitive visual stimulation (RVS) is a novel type of noninvasive neuromodulation that induces widespread rhythmic brain activity through exposure to a light that repeatedly turns on and off. A stimulation rate of 40 Hz (i.e., the light turning on and off 40 times a second) has previously been shown to induce activity and plasticity in brain regions along the visual pathway, as well as subcortical regions such as the hippocampus (Lin et al., 2021) . Repeated activation of cells in the hippocampus induces a state of neuroplasticity. Increased neuroplasticity reflects a state in which the brain is more subject to change; potentially facilitating the integration of new information as well as behavioral changes (Lu et al., 2003). The present study uses a fear conditioning paradigm in combination with 40 Hz RVS, building on the prominent role of the hippocampus in fear extinction (Myers and Davis, 2006), and the potential of 40 Hz RVS to increase neuroplasticity in the hippocampus. Furthermore, experimental treatment could potentially also increase activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which provides inhibitory feedback to the amygdala and is crucial to the fear extinction process (Gonzalez et al., 2020). Increased activity in this region increases the inhibitory feedback sent to the amygdala, decreasing fear expression (Herry et al., 2010). To evaluate the effect of 40 Hz RVS on fear extinction, rats were conditioned to expect an aversive stimulus following a tone presentation. Half of the animals were given 40 Hz stimulation, and half of them a sham stimulation (steady light) that would not elicit the neurological response expected from the stimulation. Following seven days of stimulation, the animals entered a fear extinction paradigm during which they experienced twelve tone presentations, but in contrast to the fear conditioning stage no shock followed the tone presentations. To evaluate the time-effectiveness of the effect of RVS, after an additional week of no experimental interventions, rats completed a retention test protocol. Behavioral data was collected in the form of video footage, and freezing time scored by a blind observer. Initially, fear extinction was unsuccessful but was ultimately acquired during the retention protocol. There was no significant difference in mean freezing time between the experimental and control groups, as well as no difference in the rate at which the rats’ fear response was extinguished. However, there was higher variability in individual mean freezing times in the experimental group, suggesting that the effects of 40 Hz RVS is susceptible to individual differences
A Study in Wishful Thinking: A Feminist Reading of the Conjunction of Affect and Magical Realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude and The House of the Spirits
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/4fc3899e-f521-4672-9ecd-f4b1966d2302/thumb/128.jpgMy thesis explores the relationship between magical realism and affect in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, focusing specifically on the female characters. I argue that magic in these texts acts as a physical manifestation of the societal forces underlying emotion and action. In my first chapter, I examine the relationship between archetype, affect, and magical realism, arguing that each female character embodies not only an archetype but represents an individual manifestation of affect that is further emphasized by the way they interact with the magical realm. In my second chapter, I explore Patricia Hart’s concept of magical feminism, looking at the way the female characters in The House of the Spirits interact with and challenge systemic patriarchal structures. I ultimately consider the way that affect and magic serve to inform feminist resistance in both novels
Opening the Gates?: Cannabis Legalization's Effect on Gateway Drug Patterns
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/ca798d65-cc82-4e3b-98dc-39f0124a0a57/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis analyzes how cannabis medicalization has affected gateway drug dynamics in the United States. Analysis is performed using data from the 2022 national survey on drug use and health. Two primary statistical methods are employed: bivariate analysis of rates of different gateway-histories in medical and prohibition states as well as multinomial logistic regression analysis on how legal context controlled by demographics effects the odds of experiencing various gateway-histories. In this, I find that medicalization increases the odds of experiencing a two-step gateway between alcohol and/or nicotine and cannabis with no statistically significant effect on chance of experiencing a gateway involving higher-order drugs. Among people aged twelve to twenty-five, being in a medical state increases their chances of cross trying between alcohol and/or nicotine and cannabis by 24.7%. Statistical analysis is also conducted on subsamples broken by race and the population size of the respondent's county of residence. Here, I find that for the two groups with the lowest access to cannabis in the prohibition context, Hispanic people and rural residents, being in a medical state results in a higher percent increase in cross trying between legal drugs and cannabis (46% and 50.1% respectively). Meanwhile for groups with greater access in the prohibition context, Black people and Urban residents, no statistically significant associations are found. Theoretically, this thesis lends support to generalized risk of addiction and market theories of gateway drugs while discrediting neurobiological theories
Discœurs
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/8a55b94a-54d9-4624-89d8-8ece2cda6165/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis investigates Roland Barthes’s 1977 text Fragments d’un discours amoureux through an exploration of its language, structure, and the roles it constructs and deconstructs within the lover’s discourse and within broader literary conventions. Emphasizing the text’s fragmentary form, I propose that Fragments d’un discours amoureux functions as a site where the boundaries between reader, writer, and lover dissolve, thus allowing each to concurrently inhabit the amorous discourse as the fundamental “je” (“I”) who articulates it – as the text’s amorous subject. My first chapter focuses on the linguistic and textual strategies that Barthes employs to avoid cliché, stereotype, and narrative linearity to affirm the solitude of the lover’s discourse. I situate Barthes and his reader within the framework of the écrivain (scriptor) as opposed to the écrivant (writer), emphasizing the text’s intransitive, self-reflexive form. My second chapter examines gestures within the text that blur conventional distinctions between writership and readership, highlighting Fragments d’un discours amoureux as a literary topology through which meaning is accessed with each reader’s own affective and intellectual participation in the discursive text. Ultimately, this thesis presents Roland Barthes’s Fragments d’un discours amoureux as an essay that elucidates the particularities and nuances of love by ways of an essential reimagining of literary form and readership
<"Against Forgetting:" Care, Performance, and Dissensus is "Comfort Women" Memorials>
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/8385c2b3-08ab-4dab-99ee-d1f9dc0d8d16/thumb/128.jpgWhy have monuments and memorials historically been treated as static expressions of official memory, often intended to project fixed, uncontested narratives of national identity and historical truth? What does it mean, instead, to view sculpture, and the various ephemeral actions that shape and sustain it, as part of a dual, symbiotic relationship? In this thesis, I will explore the analytical potential of an alternative approach to sculptural analysis, specifically through the lens of Korean “comfort women” memorials. “Comfort women” is a euphemistic term referring to the thousands of women across Asia who were sexually enslaved by Imperial Japan. Their memorials are placed across the globe, though largely in the United States and South Korea. This thesis examines three such memorials: the Statue of Peace in Seoul, the Peace Monument of Glendale in Southern California, and “Comfort Women” Column of Strength in San Francisco. Building on the works of Bruno Latour, Jane Bennett, and Bill Brown, I suggest that these sculptures can be better understood via their expansive networks, that is through their various human and nonhuman interactions. To explore this, I focus on three key terms: care, performance, and Jacques Ranciere’s dissensus as methods to delineate the complex relationship between these sculptures and the interactions they provoke. In doing so, I work to rewrite a troubled historical narrative and reflect on the legacy of an ever-changing, diasporic future for Korean Americans
Cicero's Monsters: Sex and Gender in Cicero's In Catilinam and Pro Caelio
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/7fe2cf41-88d4-461f-b27d-3160b3705c9c/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis explores two orations that the famous orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero, composed in the final decades of the Roman Republic: the In Catilinam and the Pro Caelio. The thesis focuses on Cicero’s deployment of attacks targeted at his opponents’ supposed contravention of Republican gender and sexual norms. As this thesis makes clear, these attacks were not idiosyncratic but reflect the broader historical context of the Late Republic, a period of great instability and inter-elite conflict. This thesis builds upon contemporary scholarship on Roman masculinity, moralizing rhetoric, and Ciceronian invective to argue that Cicero’s attacks are intimately related to his and other elite Romans’ anxieties about the breakdown of elite consensus as a result of imperialism. Chapter One begins with a summary of the relevant historical developments, followed by, first, an exploration of Cicero’s unique perspective as an outsider, and, second, an analysis of two crucial works of modern scholarship that undergird the thesis’ methodology. Chapter Two focuses on Cicero’s characterization of his political enemy, Lucius Sergius Catiline, as a figure who physically embodied the moral degradation of the Late Republic. Finally, Chapter Three considers Cicero’s Pro Caelio, in which Cicero characterizes Clodia Metelli, the sister of another political enemy, as a transgressive and dangerous Roman matron
A Cognitive Poetic Analysis of the Role of Sound in English Romantic Poetry
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/3339d5aa-0feb-443c-87e2-914e82c26003/thumb/128.jpgMy thesis will explore various representations of sound in Romantic poetry, with a specific focus on the degrees to which the representations of sound are being translated and abstracted from their original properties, and how that degree of abstraction impacts the desired aesthetic responses to the poems. Chapter One of my thesis examines this concept through more modern linguistic scholarship on expressive sound patterns and sound symbolism, in which sounds are not necessarily abstractions but embodiments of the semantic meaning. For this chapter, I draw predominantly on the work of linguists Reuven Tsur, John Ohala, and Roman Jakobson while offering a case study of William Blake’s “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” Chapter Two deals with sounds as they begin to move into the realm of abstraction, looking specifically the act of recording birdsong in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “To A Skylark,” John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Nightingale” as being representative of both music and imitations of natural creatures. Chapter Three will look at sound as pure abstractions removed entirely from their semantic meaning, wherein the sounds and “music” of a poem capture another concept entirely, looking at Coleridge’s “The Eolian Harp” and Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” By the end of this thesis, I hope to have argued that the English Romantic poets had employed a wide variety of acoustic and phonographic strategies with varying degrees of complexity and abstraction in order to convey a certain message, experience, or idea to their audience
Model-free learning activity in the lateral intraparietal (LIP) area in Rhesus macaques
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/9111515a-2f0e-41fc-b5ee-c2ce09b0cec5/thumb/128.jpgTransitive inference (TI) is the ability to learn the serial ordering of a list using implicit cues. Many brain areas have been implicated in TI, and Munoz et al. (2020) reported that neurons in the lateral intraparietal (LIP) area of the posterior parietal cortex were strong candidates due to previous research. Munoz et al. (2020) recorded neurons near area LIP in two subjects during a TI experimental task and found this area to be correlated with certain stimulus features, but uncorrelated with overall TI task performance. This thesis performs a re-analysis of the data from Munoz et al. (2020) that aims to clarify these results and investigate whether this area is associated with Q-learning, a model-free learning algorithm. Subjects’ behavioral performance was predicted by the symbolic distance between stimuli. Q-learning was found to make frequent errors in its evaluation of stimuli, despite having learned the serial ordering of the list via the expected reward of the stimulus. The neural activity differed between the two subjects, possibly due to differences in recording locations. Subject 1 provided the strongest evidence of model-free calculations, but further research is needed to better understand the role of these neurons
Spatial Distribution and Mobility of Heavy Metal Pollutants in Johnson Creek, OR
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/da9f447d-f329-4eac-8ef5-2b8a5a119852/thumb/128.jpgHeavy metal concentrations in the environment often exceed healthy levels as a result of anthropogenic activities including mining, smelting, vehicle use, and industrial production, which emit pollutants that are primarily transported by air and water. These metal pollutants can accumulate in soils and these high concentrations negatively affect plant metabolism and growth, as well as the health of the animal species that feed on these plants. Once metals are in soil, their mobility is determined by the quantity of cation exchange sites on soil components including organic matter and clay minerals, as well as pH which moderates binding behavior. Johnson Creek in Portland, OR is an urban watershed that provides a valuable opportunity to explore the spatial distribution of heavy metal pollutants in relation to the presence of these soil components, as the watershed encompasses 26 miles of widely varied land use designations including industrial and agricultural sectors. In addition, restoration projects over the last decade have brought down some of the 15 miles of stone walls lining the banks of the creek, as well as reopening historical floodplains. These projects have re-exposed decades-old soil to the creek, providing a unique opportunity to quantify heavy metal pollution and assess its potential for remobilization. Analysis of heavy metal and organic matter content in vertical soil banks at two locations along Johnson Creek indicated higher overall levels at the downstream site. Organic content was shown to have a direct relationship with metal concentrations when analyzed by location, but a more complex relationship was revealed over vertical height. Distance across height and width was found to have no significant influence on metal concentrations or other soil components. pH analysis was inconclusive due to inconsistent measurements, limiting the conclusions we can draw from this aspect of the research. At both sampling locations, metal concentrations for at least one target metal were found to exceed the U.S. EPA’s Ecological-Soil Screening Levels (Eco-SSLs) for plant or organism health, necessitating further investigation into heavy metal contamination in Johnson Creek soils
Ow that hurts! How UV-B Radiation Impacts Pollen Viability in Erythronium
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/f45ac627-8af6-4304-a8fd-7d83b1f42e39/thumb/128.jpgPollen viability is a critical component of plant reproductive success. Increasingly, viability is threatened by environmental stressors such as ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation. This study investigates the role of pollen pigmentation, particularly darker pollen, and its role in resilience against UV-B damage in Erythronium grandiflorum. To refine staining protocols, preliminary trials were conducted using various species of Tulipa, which allowed for the optimization of the double-staining process with Fluorescein Diacetate (FDA) and Propidium Iodide (PI). Samples of Erythronium grandiflorum were collected, then exposed to UV radiation for several hours, and their viability was evaluated using fluorescence microscopy and quantified using manual counting measures. The results showed that UV radiation significantly reduced pollen viability overall, but red pollen exhibited higher viability than non-red pollen in both UV and non-UV conditions. However, the protective advantages of the red pollen quickly diminished under UV exposure. These findings suggest that anthocyanin pigmentation may enhance resilience to UV damage, but it does not alone prevent it. Further research should explore the biochemical pathways of flavonoid production and their overall roles in UV defense