NeuroStudies: A Model of an Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Studies Minor.

With nationwide demand for neuroscience programs increasing, faculty and administrators at a public institution with a liberal arts curriculum sought to develop a distinctive program building on existing strengths that would best fit our primarily undergraduate population. The creation of an interdisciplinary Neuroscience Studies minor was the result of collaborations with university stakeholders. Students taking Longwood University's Neuroscience Studies minor are trained to incorporate neuroscience into their areas of interest. Students take three core courses in neuroscience, including an introductory course, laboratory course, and interdisciplinary capstone experience. Additionally, students select three neuroscience-related courses from their major discipline. To gain broad support, the program was intentionally designed to support the university's mission, academic strategic plan, and several key university initiatives. Importantly for our smaller institution, the minor was implemented using existing university faculty, university resources, and a single hire. Since starting in 2015, the minor has quickly become the third largest on campus with increasing popularity among honors students. Program graduates have applied their training to careers paths as neuroscience Ph.D. candidates, master's degrees in a range of fields such as counseling, speech pathology, nursing, education, and neuropsychology, and others have benefited upon entering the workforce. Longwood's success developing an interdisciplinary Neuroscience Studies minor represents a blueprint for smaller institutions with limited resources, to provide students with an opportunity to learn about neuroscience and prepare for the future job market.

Using Action-Mapping to Design a Non-Majors Neuroeconomics Course to Teach First-Year Collegiate Skills.

With its ability to address questions about how decisions are made and why, neuroeconomics is an excellent topic of study for college students at a variety of levels. In this paper we detail a neuroeconomics course specifically modified for undecided First-year students. One particularly daunting challenge was defining clear outcomes and delivering instruction at an appropriate level. We used Action-Mapping to achieve the course objectives of teaching collegiate skills applicable to any path of study or career while also delivering content suitable for credits in both a social science and natural science.

Effort-Based Reward (EBR) training enhances neurobiological efficiency in a problem-solving task: insights for depression therapies.

Effort-Based Reward (EBR) training strengthens associations between effort and rewards, leading to increased persistence in an unsolvable task when compared to control animals. EBR training involves placing animals in a test apparatus in which they are trained to dig in mounds to retrieve froot loop rewards (contingent group); these animals are compared to control animals that are given the same number of rewards, regardless of expended effort (noncontingent group). In the current study, the effect of EBR training on performance in a spatial task (Dry Land Maze) was explored to determine cognitive resilience during behavioral testing. Additionally, animals received BrdU injections during training to assess the role of neurogenesis on subsequent behavioral performance. Following the probe test, animals were perfused so that fos-immunoreactive (ir) cells in the hippocampus and cortical areas could be assessed. Behavioral results indicated that contingent rats were approximately 50% more efficient in locating and interacting with the previous baited well during the probe test than noncontingent animals, recruiting approximately 20% less c-fos ir-cells in the insular cortex, retrosplenial cortex, and dentate gyrus. A multidimensional scaling analysis grouped noncontingent animals together in a quadrant characterized by high latencies to find the previous baited well and higher ir-cell activation in the aforementioned areas. Thus, our data support the hypothesis that the EBR training enhances both cognitive functioning and emotional regulation during challenging events. Considering the ongoing controversy about the efficacy of pharmacological interventions in treating depression, the EBR model provides a valuable alternative for the investigation of the neurobiology of mood disorders.

Reproductive experience facilitates recovery from kainic acid-induced neural insult in female Long-Evans rats.

The hormones of pregnancy and lactation (e.g., estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin) have been shown to modulate learning, memory, and the restructuring of brain areas not traditionally associated with maternal behavior. Given the impact of reproductive experience on plasticity of brain areas such as the hippocampus, kainic acid (KA) was used in the current study to induce hippocampal-specific neurotoxic insult in adult multiparous and virgin Long-Evans rats. In Experiment I, Fluoro-Jade B, an indicant of degenerating cells, revealed significant neuronal damage in KA-treated hippocampi at 16 h post-injection in both maternal and virgin rats. In Experiment II, maternal and virgin rats were assessed in spatial and novel object preference tasks to determine the effects of KA on subsequent behavioral and cognitive responses. Twenty-four hours post injection, saline maternal animals exhibited superior memory in a spatial task. Further, maternal saline-injected rats were more similar to maternal KA-injected rats than both the virgin groups. Forty-eight hours following the KA or saline injection, compared to virgins, maternal animals demonstrated enhanced memory in the novel object memory test, regardless of type of injection. Further, neurobiological assessments in Experiment II indicated that virgin KA exposed rats had significantly more glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)-immunoreactivity in the hippocampus, suggesting that they were in an earlier stage of neural recovery compared to maternal animals or, alternatively, may have exhibited more trauma than maternal animals. Together, these data suggest that the previously reported plasticity of the maternal brain may facilitate neural and behavioral recovery from neural insults.

Behavioral training and predisposed coping strategies interact to influence resilience in male Long-Evans rats: implications for depression.

Effective coping strategies and adaptive behavioral training build resilience against stress-induced pathology. Both predisposed and acquired coping strategies were investigated in rats to determine their impact on stress responsiveness and emotional resilience. Male Long-Evans rats were assigned to one of the three coping groups: passive, active, or variable copers. Rats were then randomly assigned to either an effort-based reward (EBR) contingent training group or a non-contingent training group. Following EBR training, rats were tested in appetitive and stressful challenge tasks. Physiological responses included changes in fecal corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) metabolites as well as neuropeptide Y (NPY)-immunoreactivity in the hippocampus and amygdala. Regardless of a rat's predisposed coping strategy, EBR rats persisted longer than non-contingent rats in the appetitive problem-solving task. Furthermore, training and coping styles interacted to yield the seemingly most adaptive DHEA/corticosterone ratios in the EBR-trained variable copers. Regardless of training group, variable copers exhibited increased NPY-immunoreactivity in the CA1 region.

Using a comparative species approach to investigate the neurobiology of paternal responses.

A goal of behavioral neuroscience is to identify underlying neurobiological factors that regulate specific behaviors. Using animal models to accomplish this goal, many methodological strategies require invasive techniques to manipulate the intensity of the behavior of interest (e.g., lesion methods, pharmacological manipulations, microdialysis techniques, genetically-engineered animal models). The utilization of a comparative species approach allows researchers to take advantage of naturally occurring differences in response strategies existing in closely related species. In our lab, we use two species of the Peromyscus genus that differ in paternal responses. The male California deer mouse (Peromyscus californicus) exhibits the same parental responses as the female whereas its cousin, the common deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) exhibits virtually no nurturing/parental responses in the presence of pups. Of specific interest in this article is an exploration of the neurobiological factors associated with the affiliative social responses exhibited by the paternal California deer mouse. Because the behavioral neuroscience approach is multifaceted, the following key components of the study will be briefly addressed: the identification of appropriate species for this type of research; data collection for behavioral analysis; preparation and sectioning of the brains; basic steps involved in immunocytochemistry for the quantification of vasopressin-immunoreactivity; the use of neuroimaging software to quantify the brain tissue; the use of a microsequencing video analysis to score behavior and, finally, the appropriate statistical analyses to provide the most informed interpretations of the research findings.

Paternal experience and stress responses in California mice (Peromyscus californicus).

Paternal behavior greatly affects the survival, social development, and cognitive development of infants. Nevertheless, little research has been done to assess how paternal experience modifies the behavioral characteristics of fathers, including fear and stress responses to a novel environment. We investigated long-term behavioral and physiologic effects of parental experience in mice (Peromyscus californicus) and how this response activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (as measured by corticosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone [DHEA] levels) and interacts with anxiety-related behaviors. Three groups of adult males were tested--fathers exposed to pups, virgins exposed to pups, and virgins never exposed to pups--in 2 environments designed to elicit anxiety response: an open field with a novel object placed in the center and a closed cage containing a sample of a component of fox feces. Behavioral responses were measured by using traditional methods (duration and frequency) and behavioral-chain sequences. Results indicated that paternal experience significantly modifies a male mouse's behavioral and physiologic responses to stress-provoking stimuli. Compared with inexperienced male mice, experienced male mice had a significant decrease in the occurrence of incomplete behavioral chains during the exposure to the novel object, an index of reduced stress. Further, even moderate pup exposure induced behavioral modifications in virgin male mice. These behavioral responses were correlated with changes in corticosterone and DHEA levels. Together, these data provide evidence that interactions between male mice and offspring may have mutually beneficial long-term behavioral and physiologic effects.

Characteristic neurobiological patterns differentiate paternal responsiveness in two Peromyscus species.

Rodent paternal models provide unique opportunities to investigate the emergence of affiliative social behavior in mammals. Using biparental and uniparental Peromyscus species (californicus and maniculatus, respectively) we assessed paternal responsiveness by exposing males to biological offspring, unrelated conspecific pups, or familiar brothers following a 24-hour separation. The putative paternal circuit we investigated included brain areas involved in fear/anxiety [cingulate cortex (Cg), medial amygdala (MeA), paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), and lateral septum (LS)], parental motivation [medial preoptic area (MPOA)], learning/behavioral plasticity (hippocampus), olfaction [pyriform cortex (PC)], and social rewards (nucleus accumbens). Paternal experience in californicus males reduced fos immunoreactivity (ir) in several fear/anxiety areas; additionally, all californicus groups exhibited decreased fos-ir in the PC. Enhanced arginine vasopressin (AVP) and oxytocin (OT)-ir cell bodies and fibers, as well as increased neuronal restructuring in the hippocampus, were also observed in californicus mice. Multidimensional scaling analyses revealed distinct brain activation profiles differentiating californicus biological fathers, pup-exposed virgins, and pup-naïve virgins. Specifically, associations among MPOA fos, CA1 fos, dentate gyrus GFAP, CA2 nestin-, and PVN OT-ir characterized biological fathers; LS fos-, Cg fos-, and AVP-ir characterized pup-exposed virgins, and PC-, PVN-, and MeA fos-ir characterized pup-naïve virgins. Thus, whereas fear/anxiety areas characterized pup-naïve males, neurobiological factors involved in more diverse functions such as learning, motivation, and nurturing responses characterized fatherhood in biparental californicus mice. Less distinct paternal-dependent activation patterns were observed in uniparental maniculatus mice. These data suggest that dual neurobiological circuits, leading to the inhibition of social-dependent anxiety as well as the activation of affiliative responses, characterize the transition from nonpaternal to paternal status in californicus mice.