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Manipulation of Ventral Tegmental Area Dopaminergic Neurons in Stressed Female Mice and its Effect on Behaviors
Full text linkStress is a known risk factor for the development of neuropsychiatric disorders. While the ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopaminergic pathway is best known for its involvement in reward and motivation, recent research has suggested that this system could also play another role that is related to stress. Previous studies have shown that females have a higher sensitivity to stress. Despite these observations, research has tended to focus on the effects of stress on males. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether a non-social stressor impacts the VTA dopaminergic system in DAT-Cre female mice. We also explored whether optogenetic manipulation of VTA dopaminergic neurons has effects on behavior. Finally, we examined how the timing of stress affects behavior. Our results were not able to demonstrate that VTA dopaminergic manipulations influence behavior, possibly due to the small sample size used for this experiment. Continuing to research the role the VTA dopaminergic system plays in stress in females and males will allow us to uncover any potential therapeutic treatments for stress-related disorders as well as provide a greater benefit to people that have been traditionally excluded from research meant to improve public health
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Social Exclusion modifies the behavioral response and neural representation of physical pain
No full textSocial pain, the emotional pain caused by aversive experiences with one’s social group, can have deleterious effects on both mental and physical health. The “pain overlap theory” proposes that the experience of social pain can overlap with and modulate physical pain. However, we do not know if a neural substrate exists where social and physical pain overlap. To address this gap, in this dissertation, I designed a novel Social Exclusion paradigm, which we have named the “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) task in which mice are separated from their cagemates by a switchable glass divider and observe their cagemates collectively consume a reward. Chapter 1 explores the characterization of novel behavioral motifs during Social Exclusion and the subsequent changes to different modalities of physical pain. Using unsupervised machine learning techniques, we have discovered a “Active Coping” in which mice are more likely to climb to, rear near, or orient towards the social group, which is elevated during Social Exclusion. After Social Exclusion, mice also have enhanced nocifensive responses. Chapter 2 investigates the overlap of social and physical pain within the anterior insular cortex. Results indicate that social and physical pain do not spatially overlap at the single unit, but rather Social Exclusion induces a change in the population response to physical pain and alters the encoding of nociceptive stimuli in the aIC. This change in physical pain encoding is mediated by the recruitment of the endocannabinoid and oxytocin neuromodulatory systems. Overall, the results from this dissertation suggest we have generated a Social Exclusion paradigm within rodents that successfully modulates the sensory perception of physical pain and that the anterior insular cortex can effectively integrates social and physical pain using neuromodulation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Estimating a Separably Markov Random Field from Binary Observations
No full textA fundamental problem in neuroscience is to characterize the dynamics of spiking from the neurons in a circuit that is involved in learning about a stimulus or a contingency. A key limitation of current methods to analyze neural spiking data is the need to collapse neural activity over time or trials, which may cause the loss of information pertinent to understanding the function of a neuron or circuit. We introduce a new method that can determine not only the trial-to-trial dynamics that accompany the learning of a contingency by a neuron, but also the latency of this learning with respect to the onset of a conditioned stimulus. The backbone of the method is a separable two-dimensional (2D) random field (RF) model of neural spike rasters, in which the joint conditional intensity function of a neuron over time and trials depends on two latent Markovian state sequences that evolve separately but in parallel. Classical tools to estimate state-space models cannot be applied readily to our 2D separable RF model. We develop efficient statistical and computational tools to estimate the parameters of the separable 2D RF model. We apply these to data collected from neurons in the prefrontal cortex in an experiment designed to characterize the neural underpinnings of the associative learning of fear in mice. Overall, the separable 2D RF model provides a detailed, interpretable characterization of the dynamics of neural spiking that accompany the learning of a contingency.National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.) (Grant R01-MH102441-01)National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (U.S.) (Award DP2-DK-102256-01)National Institute on Aging (Grant RF1- AG047661-01
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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