Matching Items (3)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: psychology
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
ContributorsChandler, N. Kayla (Author) / Neisewander, Janet (Thesis director) / Sanabria, Federico (Committee member) / Olive, M. Foster (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Stress activates physiological systems within the body to protect oneself against the potential harmful effects of enduring long-term stress. Past studies have shown that structures involved in timing are implicated in a number of psychological disorders and further are sensitive to stress. In this experiment, Sprague Dawley rats are trained to perform a perspective timing task and are then exposed to twice-daily chronic variable stress for 21 days. Behavioral data are collected, followed by post-mortem tissue analysis of the PFC, hippocampus, and striatum. This study aims to examine the morphological changes in key brain regions such as the hippocampus that appear to be involved in interval timing. Additionally, this study aims to confirm that dendritic complexity in the hippocampus produces consistent data using a classic Sholl analysis versus using a virtual image-stacking software, Neurostackr. The results of this study demonstrate that the expected Gaussian graph produced from a classic Sholl analysis was produced from both a long-shaft and short-shaft neuron found in the hippocampus using the virtual technology. These findings verify that a virtual image-stacking software and Sholl analysis will suffice in place of the traditional method of hand traced neurons on a transparent sheet with concentric circles to count bifurcation points. This virtual method ultimately reduces cost, improves timeliness of data collection, and eliminates some of the subjectivity of human error.
ContributorsGarcia, Jasmine Brooke (Author) / Sanabria, Federico (Thesis director) / Gupta, Tanya (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Stress, empathy, and emotion regulation are factors that can greatly shape an individual's behavior, thoughts, and physiology. The degree to which an individual experiences stress, demonstrates empathy, or is able to regulate emotions can influence his or her ability to establish strong social bonds. The current study investigated the relationships among stress, empathy, and emotion regulation and considered gender differences in these relationships. I hypothesized that higher levels of current stress would be associated with lower levels of empathy and greater difficulties with emotion regulation, and that empathy and emotion regulation would be positively related. Supporting these hypotheses, the following relationships were found: (a) negative correlation between stress and empathy, (b) positive correlation between stress and emotion regulation difficulties, and (c) negative correlation between empathy and emotion regulation difficulties. Results also revealed that greater perceived stress was associated with less empathy in women, but it was unrelated to empathy in men. On the other hand, stress was associated with greater emotion regulation difficulties in both men and women, indicating that either gender may experience a greater disturbance in their emotional response within a social situation when under the influence of stress. Empathy and emotion regulation are positively correlated in both genders, which might suggest that high emotion regulation may allow for appropriate empathy responses within a given social context.
ContributorsHanna, Rand Maria (Author) / Roberts, Nicole (Thesis director) / Burleson, Mary (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor)
Created2016-12