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Animals encounter information from different resources simultaneously, integrating input from multiple sensory systems before responding behaviorally. When different cues interact with one another, they may enhance, diminish, or have no impact on their responses. In this project, we test how the presence of chemical cues affect the perception of visual cues. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) often use both chemical cues and visual cues to communicate with shoal mates, to assess predation risk, and to locate food. For example, zebrafish rely on both olfactory cues and visual cues for kin recognition, and they frequently use both chemical and visual cues to search for and to capture prey. In zebrafish, the terminal nerve (TN) constitutes the olfacto-visual centrifugal pathway and connects the olfactory bulb with the retina, thus allowing olfactory perception also to activate visual receptors. Past studies have found that the presence of an olfactory cue can modulate visual sensitivity in zebrafish through the terminal nerve pathway. Alternatively, given that zebrafish are highly social, the presence of social chemical cues may distract individuals from responding to other visual cues, such as food and predator visual cues. Foraging and predator chemical cues, including chemical food cues and alarm cues, may also distract individuals from responding to non-essential visual cues. Here, we test whether the response to a visual cue either increases or decreases when presented in concert with alanine, an amino acid that represents the olfactory cues of zebrafish prey. We found that the presence of chemical cues did not affect whether zebrafish responded to visual cues, but that the fish took longer to respond to visual cues when chemical cues were also present. These findings suggest that different aspects of behavior could be affected by the interaction between sensory modalities. We also found that this impact of delayed response was significant only when the visual cue<br/>was weak compared to the strength of the chemical cue, suggesting that the salience of interacting cues may also have an influence on determining the outcomes of the interactions. Overall, the interactive effects of chemicals on an animal’s response to visual cues may also have wide-ranging impacts on behavior including foraging, mating, and evading predators, and the interaction of cues may affect different aspects of the same behavior.
For my project, I delve into the relationships of Victor and the Monster as well as the relationships Victor shares with other characters that were underdeveloped within the original novel by Mary Shelley in the novel Franeknstein. I examine their relationships in two components. The first through my own interpretation of Victor and the Monster’s relationship within a creative writing piece that extends the novel as if Victor had lived rather than died in the arctic in order to explore the possibilities of a more complex set of relationships between Victor and the Monster than simply creator-creation. My writing focuses on the development of their relationship once all they have left is each other. The second part of my project focuses on an analytical component. I analyze and cite the reasoning for my creative take on Victor and the Monster as well as their relationship within the novel and Mary Shelley’s intentions.
In this essay, I set out to explore and analyze how Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and the character of Eleanor Vance in particular, disrupts and redefines the traditional conventions of the Female Gothic within the context of the 20th century. I utilize Tania Modleski's gendering of Freud's theory of psychoanalysis in her exploration of the ‘Female Uncanny,’ arguing that the source of the Uncanny in the Female Gothic can be found in the "fear of being lost in the mother." I argue that Jackson's complex personal life, including her fraught relationship with her mother and her difficult marriage with literary critic Edgar Hyman, color her fiction and the primary motivations of her protagonist, Eleanor Vance. I also outline the traditional structure of the Gothic novel and the heroine's journey. With the necessary context provided, I then explain how Eleanor Vance’s character rejects these Gothic traditions and ushers in a new era of Female Gothic fiction.