Institutional Scholarship :: Browsing by Author "Robinson-Drummer, Patrese"

Browsing by Author "Robinson-Drummer, Patrese"

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An Ontogenetic Profiling of Object Recognition Tasks in the Rodent Brain
(2022) Rodríguez Quintero, José E.; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese
In Neuroscience, learning and memory is an area of expansive and vital research, with an abundance of implications to our daily lives, education, development, and more. In our developmental neuroscience lab with Dr. Patresse Robinson-Drummer, we explored the question behind learning and memory behaviors corresponding to regions of activation in the brain. During development, animals' capacity for learning and memory change. Researchers in this area are interested in studying what brain regions are involved in learning and memory mechanisms, such as an animals' ability to recognize and remember an object. For this purpose, recognition memory tasks such as Object Recognition, Object location and Object-in-Place can be useful because they provide insight into a rodent's ability to learn and remember in different ways. This kind of learning is called incidental learning and involves acquiring information unintentionally during an activity and is often measured in rodents using object recognition tasks that capitalize on their natural tendency to explore novel objects in their environments. All of these tasks emerge at different ages and require different brain regions but it's not clear whether these same regions are needed during development or if the emergence of the behavior aligns with functional correlates of regional activity. We are beginning to tackle these questions starting with adolescent animals. What we understand so far is that the perirhinal cortex is involved in object recognition, the hippocampus is involved in object location, and the medial prefrontal cortex is involved in object-in-place. At postnatal day 28, animals were randomly assigned to either be trained in one task or to a control group of habituation only animals. After completing the task, the animals remained in their cages for 90 minutes and were then sacrificed in order to collect brain slices and conduct immunohistochemistry and DAB-Sonicate for c-FOS staining. The slices were then captured as images and analyzed using Image J FIJI and Jamovi Stats. Results showed that for OR and OiP, but not for OL, animals' novelty score was significantly above chance (0.80 and 0.69, respectively). However, our investigation was unable to find a correlation in adolescent PD28 rats between recognition and location tasks and the perirhinal cortex of the brain. Although the Prh exhibited c-Fos activation, a protein marker that suggests learning and memory processes in the brain occurred, the difference to our control animal's c-Fos expression was not significant. This pilot lab was able to develop protocols for the immunohistochemistry and DAB-Sonicate for the c-Fos staining as well as a standardized protocol for assessing c-Fos count in Image J for the perirhinal cortex and hippocampus. The ongoing plan for this developmental neuroscience lab will be attempting to reproduce these assays across 3 more developmental ages, with the project goal aiming to create an ontogenetic profiling of the rodent brain and the corresponding regions of activation.
Dopamine Deficiency Predicts Pain: Toward A Novel Framework for the Neurophysiological Classification and Treatment of Chronic Pain
(2022) Herman, Arielle F.; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese; Boltz, Marilyn
Chronic pain is a widespread issue which strips millions of people of their agency, and bears devastating and often debilitating lifelong consequences for mental and physical wellbeing. It is also one of the largest burdens on socioeconomic welfare, costing the United States government an estimated $635 billion each year in medical expense and lost productivity. Although its pathophysiological mechanisms are far from elucidated, research spanning the past several decades has revealed a number of significant neurobiological correlates and theoretical frameworks which have yet to escape the enclosure of scientific journals to enter both the clinic and public awareness. It is generally accepted that the treatment of chronic pain is somewhat of a medical conundrum, with few chronic pain patients experiencing long-term relief, and many encountering interpersonal frustration and systemic roadblocks in clinical care. In line with chronic pain's status as a public health crisis, a great deal of literature highlights the urgency for new targets in pain management and prevention. Many published studies and institutional reports even provide detailed protocol for the implementation of higher-efficacy treatment methods for a wide array of conditions. In other words, there already exists a substantial pool of scientific insight which, if extended to translational research, could decrease morbidity and improve quality of life for many individuals, some of whom may be suffering unnecessarily or excessively, in a medical system that cannot provide for their clinical needs, often prescribing treatments designed for acute injuries to those who live for years with an elusive chronic syndrome. As a result, people's lives are excessively devastated by pain conditions which could be better managed, mitigated, or entirely prevented. Among scattered literature originating from a range of perspectives, one set of relationships emerges as critically important, with expansive implications for many areas of pain research, as well as for those who suffer with chronic pain. However, these disparate findings are yet to be integrated, and are therefore largely unknown, and alarmingly under-researched. A close examination of decades of research that has remained largely under the radar reveals a significant contribution of the state of dopaminergic neurotransmission to the mechanisms which underlie pain chronification. This comprehensive review synthesizes research in pharmacology, neurophysiology, psychiatry, and etiology in an effort to delineate the evidence for dopamine dysfunction as a common mechanism in the development of chronic pain. This includes documentation of correlational data revealing its prevalence, neurophysiological findings demonstrating its essential role in the homeostasis of pain-processing circuitry, as well as clinical evidence of the pervasive downstream effects and predispositions consistently observed with an imbalance of this system. By triangulating a number of neurophysiological mechanisms which are rarely considered in tandem, this paper highlights a critical shortcoming in the current literature on chronic pain. Integration of this widely overlooked research ultimately points to significant new targets for the clinical intervention, prevention, and reversal of chronic pain conditions, under a novel framework which could advance the current understandings about the fundamental nature of pain.
Examining the Impact of Neonatal Pain and Infection on Dopaminergic Function During Learning in Long Evans Rats
(2023) Hoffman, Dori; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese
Admission to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit may potentially result in early life trauma. The effects of early life stressors are associated with possible disruptions to the dopaminergic system, resulting in changes to adulthood aversion. Gomes and Barr (2020) simulated the NICU experience via pain and infection exposure on rodents; experimental groups were divided into exposure to pain, to infection, combined conditions, and a non-exposed control. Aversive behavior was measured in adulthood via Conditioned Place Aversion tasks, and brain samples were collected. In the current study, we stained for tyrosine hydroxylase to measure dopaminergic change in relation to early life trauma exposure. Due to their association with dopamine expression, the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra were targeted for immunohistochemical analysis. In the substantia nigra, there were no significant changes in tyrosine hydroxylase expression between groups; however, tissue damage limited analysis of the ventral tegmental area. These results suggest tyrosine hydroxylase expression in the substantia nigra has no impact on early life pain and infection and their association with a change in aversive behaviors during adulthood.
Exploring the Effects of Social Isolation on Novel Object Recognition (NOR) in Danio rerio
(2024) Ishwar, Arushi; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese
Social isolation can negatively impact learning and memory systems. In zebrafish, novel object recognition (NOR) paradigms are often used to understand recognition memory capabilities. Zebrafish are known to be social animals, who are negatively affected when isolated. The present study aimed to address the effects of social isolation on the NOR task in zebrafish models. We used color as the novel characteristic to test NOR in socially isolated (ISO) versus socially stimulated (SOC) zebrafish with retention periods of two-hours and five-minutes. Results showed no novelty preferences or familiarity preferences in either group of zebrafish, social or isolated, for either retention period. Overall, discrimination ratios were not significantly different from chance levels. Future research will focus on reducing the potential stressors in this study that may have interfered with the NOR ability of zebrafish.
Long-term Effects of Perinatal Affective Pain on c-Fos and N2RA: N2RB expression in the rACC of adult rats
(2022) Nicolayevsky, Sofia; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese
Preterm infants in intensive care are exposed to higher levels of inflammatory injuries and infections than babies born full-term, during a time where noxious stimulations are normally absent. Research by Gomes and Barr (2020) suggests that early life exposures to injury and infection concurrently, as well as injury alone, have long-term effects on the nociceptive and affective components of pain. Following aversive conditioning, regions critical for pain processing (like the anterior cingulate cortex) show increased c-Fos expression and changes in glutamatergic subunit ratios for NR2A and NR2B. Using tissues acquired from Gomes and Barr (2020), the goal of this study was to measure activity in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), through c-Fos expression and the semi-quantify the N2RA: N2RB ratio, in adult rats following a formalin-induced conditioned place aversion (F-CPA) task. We compared c-Fos positive cells in the ACC in rats exposed to either infection and inflammatory injury (E. coli and carrageenan), only infection (E. coli and saline), only inflammatory injury (PBS and carrageenan), or a control (PBS and saline). Results showed no significant difference in c-Fos expression in the ACC between any of the four groups. Due to the small sample size, rACC slices were grouped with the rest of the ACC, but the sample size still did not allow statistically powered results. Lastly, we were unable to semi-quantify the N2RA: N2RB ratio as we did not have full brains to run immunofluorescent staining. Contrary to our hypotheses, these findings revealed adult ACC activity did not reflect developmental treatment-related exposures as proposed by Gomes and Barr (2020) as well as previous research studying affective pain and the ACC.
Medial Prefrontal Cortex Calcium Dynamics During Innate Threat Virtual Reality Simulations in Mice
(2024) Krishnamurthy, Emi; Robinson-Drummer, Patrese; Kaye, Alfred; Staszko, Stephanie
Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying innate fear is critical for future research to advance treatments for anxiety-related disorders. This thesis explores the neural dynamics of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during innate threat processing in mice using virtual reality (VR) goggle simulations of looming scenes, where an overhead dark circle expands rapidly, mimicking the sudden dive of an overhead predator. We employ in vivo calcium imaging along with a novel VR apparatus — specifically designed for mouse behavioral neuroscience research — in order to simulate innate threats in a controlled environment. The current findings reveal that specific neuronal ensembles in the prelimbic (PL) area of mPFC exhibit distinct activity patterns in response to repeated looming stimuli. Repeated looming exposures correlate strongly with an attenuation of neural activity, indicating a neural basis in PL for habituation to innate threats, a result that supports previous research that startle behavior and frontal norepinephrine attenuates over repeated exposure to innately threatening stimuli. This study not only supports the use of VR in behavioral neuroscience but also enhances our understanding of the neural circuits involved in threat processing. The current results contribute to a growing body of work on fear encoding in PFC, highlighting how salient sensory inputs lead to innate behavioral outputs through modulation by individual neurons.

Browsing by Author "Robinson-Drummer, Patrese"

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