Extensive research has linked early life stress (ELS), such as maltreatment and disrupted caregiving relationships in childhood, with numerous negative somatic and psychiatric health outcomes. …
The mouse olfactory system mediates the sense of odorants and appropriate behavioral responses. The main olfactory epithelium (MOE) expresses the largest number of G-protein coupled …
Understanding the neural dynamics of action selection, planning, and execution is necessary to treat motor system disorders. This task is complicated by the fact that …
Internal plans for movements comprise a major element of arm behavior and movement control. In the work presented in this thesis, we have identified kinematic …
In this thesis, we explored mechanisms for how the brain transforms incoming sensory information into meaningful motor output. The motor cortex is known as the …
Early in the development of Xenopus laevis tadpoles, as the animals become capable of actively navigating their environment, individual neurons in the optic tectum become …
Sensory neurons exhibit unpredictable spiking responses to fixed sensory input. Some of this response variability is correlated between neuronal pairs. This correlated variability (spike-count correlation; …
An essential step in the development of a cortical auditory neural prothesis (ANP) is the development of a reliable method for reconstructing acoustic stimuli from …
The ability to recognize others’ emotions is important for humans and other primates, and it is a crucial component of social processes such as empathy …
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder that causes progressive memory loss and cognitive decline. AD is associated with neuropathological hallmarks of beta amyloid …
The brain is composed of discrete units called neurons. Neurons communicate with each other and form functional circuits, the fundamental computational units of the nervous …
Both epileptic seizures (ES) and psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are severely debilitating conditions that are frequently encountered in neurology and psychiatry. Based on a psychotherapy …
The thalamus is essential for normal brain function. The thalamus is widely interconnected with other brain areas, and is best known for relaying sensory information …
The thalamus is an important subcortical structure that relays afferent information to the neocortex, provides a pathway for corticocortical interaction, and plays key roles in …
Alcohol use disorder (AUD), defined as prolonged alcohol consumption despite negative consequences, is fundamentally a disease of associative memory. Individuals with AUD form short-term aversive …
Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder characterized by the recurrence of spontaneous seizures. However, the mechanisms of transition into seizures are still unclear. A better …
Early Infantile Epileptic Encephalopathy is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by severe epilepsy, with seizure onset during infancy or childhood. It is caused by a mutation …
Primates are capable of vast numbers of reach and grasp actions for a near infinite combination of perceived features. This essential primate behavior arises from …
Background: Neuropathic pain is highly prevalent and expensive to treat. It is also contributing to the current opioid epidemic and deadliest overdose crisis in the …
Among the many possible motor- and non-motor symptoms that patients with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) may experience, there are several that do not respond well to …