Psychobiology Research at Wheaton College
Left, Igor Schwartzman '98 explains his research to a colleague at the 1998 meeting of the North East Undergraduate/Graduate Research Organization for Neuroscience (N.E.U.R.O.N.)
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Psychobiology Research at Wheaton College
Left, Igor Schwartzman '98 explains his research to a colleague at the 1998 meeting of the North East Undergraduate/Graduate Research Organization for Neuroscience (N.E.U.R.O.N.) |
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Why Research? |
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The Research Team Approach |
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Abstracts of Recent Psychobiology Research Presentations/Publications |
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Titles of Other Recent Student Investigations |
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At Wheaton, the faculty in the Psychobiology Program believe that students learn best by doing. Asking a question on your own, getting your hands dirty as you wrestle with finding the answer--these are experiences that are not forgotten, and from which much more is learned than a simple list of facts. |
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| To that end, we strongly encourage our students pursue independent research. In some cases, that research may be a project designed and developed by a faculty member; in other cases, it may be a project of the student's own design. In either case, students may receive academic credit for their research efforts, and typically present their work at local and/or national conferences. | |||
| The Psychobiology Research Team consists of students and faculty working in partnership to explore common areas of interest under the rubric of Psychobiology. The team meets once a week to debrief and share results. Subteams of students work on a particular subset of the data collection and analysis, but every team member learns how to do all the tasks used by the team as a whole. Thus within the team, there are specialists, while everyone on the team is a bit of a generalist. Students that are more experienced in the use of a given technique train others--in some cases, first year students are teaching seniors how to use the microtome, while seniors teach juniors how to score videotape data. At the end of the semester, students present talks on their findings, and many have presented their work at international, national, and regional conferences. The format of the team builds a work and learning collaboration that is identical to those we believe we will find in the workplace, and gives us "on-the-job" training, while increasing our science literacy and technical skill sets. Each member of the team learns with the others, as well as from the others--and learns by doing. We believe that the kind of research partnership between students and faculty that is evident in the Psychobiology Research Team is an ideal way to learn and to do science. The Research Team experience is also an effective means of promoting student success in the sciences, as all of the Research Team members who have graduated to date are in graduate training or have jobs in their major fields. | |||
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North East Undergraduate Research Organization for Neuroscience (N.E.U.R.O.N.), April 2000 AUTHOR: Sue Adams TITLE: Maternal Stress Predicts Child Shyness at Age 4 ABSTRACT: Data suggest that maternal or prenatal stress can influence child temperament in a number of ways. It has been shown that stress during pregnancy causes an alteration in hypothamic-pituatary-adrenal axis, which may result in behavioral inhibition when placed in social situations. Maternal stress, however, might also be mediated by the mother's personality; specifically by her sense of optimism about negative events. This study investigated the relationship between stress and anxiety during pregnancy, optimism, and a child's level of shyness through a series of maternal and teacher questionnaires, as well as child observations. The results indicated that state anxiety during pregnancy is a significant predictor of childhood shyness, although optimism was not found to be a significant mediator. This data suggest that if pregnant women are aware of their stress and anxiety during pregnancy, they may be able to take precautions against the effects of stress on their developing fetus. Eastern New England Biology Conference, April 1999 AUTHOR: Thais Mollet TITLE: Differences in Effectiveness in Treating Low Back Pain ABSTRACT: Much controversy stirs in the medical field on the subject of the effectiveness of so-called "complementary medicine." Among the fields that fall under this title are Chiropractics, Osteopathy and Physical Therapy. In this study, I am comparing the effectiveness of each of these three disciplines in the treatment of lower back pain, using a meta-analysis of data published in journals and other peer-reviewed publications. Evaluative research of this kind (though rare) is important in order to empirically verify the most effective treatments. Preliminary data from this analysis suggests that the three fields do differ in both their treatments and success rates with lower back pain. Boston Area Neuroscience Group (B.A.N.G.)Annual Meeting, Feb. 1999 AUTHORS: Kathleen N. Morgan, Melissa M. Milton, & Jill D. Brederson TITLE: Prenatal Stress Affects Performance in the Morris Water Maze ABSTRACT: Previous work suggests that exposure to prenatal stress (PNS) may damage the hippocampus of developing animals. Because the hippocampus is a brain structure implicated in the establishment and maintenance of spatial memory, we hypothesized that possible damage to the hippocampus of PNS rats might be detectable in a behavioral assay for spatial ability called the Morris water maze. PNS and control rats were given daily sessions of 10 trials in a water maze until they reached a criterion of reaching the hidden platform no less than 9 out of 10 trials in under 9 seconds. Subjects were then given a week off with no trials, then tested again. For both test sessions, latency to find the hidden platform and number of days needed to reach criterion were recorded. Results confirm the hypothesis that PNS rats show impaired spatial learning abilities. AUTHORS: Kathleen N. Morgan, Jill D. Brederson, & Melissa M. Milton TITLE: Behavior of Prenatally Stressed Rats in an Elevated Plus Maze ABSTRACT: Work
in our lab and elsewhere suggests that exposure to prenatal stress creates
animals that are hyperemotional. We tested this hypothesis by comparing
the behavior of prenatally stressed (PNS) rats with control rats in an
elevated plus maze. Animals were videotaped during 10-minute test sessions
in the maze. Behaviors recorded later from these tapes included duration
of time in closed vs. open arms, as well as all occurrences of body stretching,
intersection crosses, and rearing. Half of the animals in each condition
were administered 1ml/kg distilled water IP 30 minutes prior to testing,
and half received 1ml/kg kava root extract (a known partial GABA agonist).
Preliminary results suggest that PNS rats are indeed more anxious, and
less sensitive to the anxiolytic effects of GABA agonists. North East Undergraduate/Graduate Research Organization for Neuroscience (N.E.U.R.O.N.) annual meeting, May 1998 AUTHORS: Igor N. Schwartzman, Kathleen N. Morgan, & Jonathan E. Thayer TITLE: Exposure to Prenatal Stress Decreases Brain Weights and Affects Neural Structure in Neonatal Rats ABSTRACT: Recent work in our laboratory suggests that brain weights of 2- day old prenatally stressed (PNS) rats are significantly lighter than those of same-age controls, but that this difference disappears by postnatal day (PND) 14 (Ward, Schwartzman, & Morgan, 1997). The purpose of the present study was to: 1) attempt to replicate our previous finding; 2) better define the developmental time course of the apparent recovery in brain weight of 14-day old PNS rats; and 3) investigate the nature of the brain weight differences between control and PNS rats by by examining the structure of the hippocampus in the two groups. Because of existing data that suggest that hippocampal damage (particularly in the CA1 region of the hippocampus) is a common consequence of prenatal stress (Sapolsky, 1986; Uno et al., 1994; McCormick, Smythe, Sharma, & Meaney, 1995), we hypothesized that this region might be a good starting point for an investigation of the neural structural differences between PNS and control rats that might explain observed differences in brain weights. As glia make up the marjority of brain cell types, our first probe was to compare glial cell distribution between PNS and control rat pups, at three different ages (on PND 2, PND 8, and PND 15, specifically). Rats were prenatally stressed by exposing their mothers to 130 dB unpredictable 5-sec. sound bursts randomly presented 30 times a week throughout the 3 weeks of their gestation. Control mothers were not subjected to this sound stressor. Two infants from each litter (a male and female when possible) were culled at 2 days, 8 days, and 15 days of age, terminally anesthetized, and perfused using saline and a 9% paraformaldehyde solution. Brains were weighed the following day to the nearest 0.0001 gram, using an electronic precision balance. Results confirmed our previous finding that PNS rats' brains are significantly ligher than control rats' brains at 2 days of age. However, unlike our previous work, the present study showed that this difference persisted at 8 days and 15 days of age--the terminus of neonatal rat brain development. Biological Psychology Symposium, American Psycholological Society, May 1997 AUTHOR: Jonathan E. Thayer TITLE: Prenatal Stress Affects Opioid-Mediated Nociception in Juvenile Rats ABSTRACT: Previous research has demonstrated that prenatal stress (PNS) decreases concentrations of opioid receptors in the striatum, increases baseline methionine enkephalin levels in the hypothalamus, and increases b-endorphin release during stress. The consequences of these changes could include altered pain sensitivity and opioid system reactivity. This hypothesis was tested through comparing juvenile control and PNS animals' responses to a cold-water tail-flick test in several conditions: 1) baseline, 2) tail-flick subsequent to saline administration, and 3) tail-flick subsequent to administration of the opioid antagonist naloxone. Prenatal stress increased baseline tail flick latencies and produced a larger reduction in latency after naloxone administration in comparison to controls. Also, a greater difference in sensitivity to naloxone and saline was observed between PNS males and PNS females than between control males and females. Results suggest that PNS animals are less sensitive to pain and more sensitive to opioid blockade than are controls, and that prenatal stress accentuates the well-documented sex difference in pain sensitivity. AUTHORS: Kathleen N. Morgan & Jonathan E. Thayer TITLE: Prenatal Stress Affects Emotional Responses to an Escape Task ABSTRACT: Control and prenatally stressed (PNS) adult male rats were tested for their ability to learn to escape mild footshock. Although there was no difference between control and PNS rats in latency to acquire the response that terminated the shock, there was a significant difference between the two groups in their emotional reactions to the task. Specifically, PNS rats vocalized significantly more during training trials, showed more toothchattering, and developed more abnormal behavioral coping strategies tha n did controls. Results are consistent with the theory that prenatal stress produces hyper-emotional individuals that may be more sensitive to aversive stimuli. In Press, Developmental Psychobiology: AUTHORS: Kathleen N. Morgan, Jonathan E. Thayer, & Cheryl A. Frye TITLE: Prenatal Stress Supresses Rat Pup Ultrasonic Vocalization and Myoclonic Twitching ABSTRACT: Prenatally stressed infant rats were separated from their dams and littermates on postnatal day fourteen and their rates of ultrasonic vocalizationz (USV's) and myoclonic twitching in response to that separation were recorded. Compared to control pups, prenatally stressed pups vocalized significantly less often and showed significantly less myoclonic twitching in response to this test. Results are interpreted in terms of the ability of prenatal stress to produce infants that are behaviorally inhibited when in a novel or stressful situation. |
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