Dynamics of dopamine signaling and network activity in the striatum during learning and motivated pursuit of goals

Thesis (Ph. D. in Neuroscience)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "February 2013."Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-126).Learning to direct behaviors towards goals is a central function of all vertebrate nervous systems. Initial learning often involves an exploratory phase, in which actions are flexible and highly variable. With repeated successful experience, behaviors may be guided by cues in the environment that reliably predict the desired outcome, and eventually behaviors can be executed as crystallized action sequences, or "habits", which are relatively inflexible. Parallel circuits through the basal ganglia and their inputs from midbrain dopamine neurons are believed to make critical contributions to these phases of learning and behavioral execution. To explore the neural mechanisms underlying goal-directed learning and behavior, I have employed electrophysiological and electrochemical techniques to measure neural activity and dopamine release in networks of the striatum, the principle input nucleus of the basal ganglia as rats learned to pursue rewards in mazes. The electrophysiological recordings revealed training dependent dynamics in striatum local field potentials and coordinated neural firing that may differentially support both network rigidity and flexibility during pursuit of goals. Electrochemical measurements of real-time dopamine signaling during maze running revealed prolonged signaling changes that may contribute to motivating or guiding behavior. Pathological over or under-expression of these network states may contribute to symptoms experienced in a range of basal ganglia disorders, from Parkinson's disease to drug addiction.by Mark W. Howe.Ph.D.in Neuroscienc

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: Hardliners: A History of the Emery-Waterhouse Company by Edgar Allen Beem and Charles L. Hildreth, Jr.; L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon by Leon Gorman; Eminent Mainers: Succinct Biographies of Thousands of Amazing Mainers, Mostly Dead and a Few People from Away Who Have Done Something Useful Within the State Maine; Compiled by Arthur Douglas Stover and Maine: Downeast and Different: An Illustrated History by Neil Rolde; ; The Rangeley and Its Region: The Famous Boat and Lakes of Western Maine by Stephen A. Cole; Voyages: A Maine Franco-American Reader, edited by Nelson Madore and Barry Rodrigu

Bostonia: The Boston University Alumni Magazine. Volume 11

Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs

Relative Abundance of Bacillus spp., Surfactant-Associated Bacterium Present in a Natural Sea Slick Observed by Satellite SAR Imagery over the Gulf of Mexico

The damping of short gravity-capillary waves (Bragg waves) due to surfactant accumulation under low wind speed conditions results in the formation of natural sea slicks. These slicks are detectable visually and in synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery. Surfactants are produced by natural life processes of many marine organisms, including bacteria, phytoplankton, seaweed, and zooplankton. In this work, samples were collected in the Gulf of Mexico during a research cruise on the R/V F.G. Walton Smith to evaluate the relative abundance of Bacillus spp., surfactant-associated bacteria, in the sea surface microlayer compared to the subsurface water at 0.2 m depth. A method to reduce potential contamination of microlayer samples during their collection on polycarbonate filters was implemented and advanced, including increasing the number of successive samples per location and changing sample storage procedures. By using DNA analysis (real-time polymerase chain reaction) to target Bacillus spp., we found that in the slick areas, these surfactant-associated bacteria tended to reside mostly in subsurface waters, lending support to the concept that the surfactants they may produce move to the surface where they accumulate under calm conditions and enrich the sea surface microlayer

Relative Abundance of Bacillus spp., Surfactant-Associated Bacterium Present in a Natural Sea Slick Observed by Satellite SAR Imagery over the Gulf of Mexico

The damping of short gravity-capillary waves (Bragg waves) due to surfactant accumulation under low wind speed conditions results in the formation of natural sea slicks. These slicks are detectable visually and in synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery. Surfactants are produced by natural life processes of many marine organisms, including bacteria, phytoplankton, seaweed, and zooplankton. In this work, samples were collected in the Gulf of Mexico during a research cruise on the R/V F.G. Walton Smith to evaluate the relative abundance of Bacillus spp., surfactant-associated bacteria, in the sea surface microlayer compared to the subsurface water at 0.2 m depth. A method to reduce potential contamination of microlayer samples during their collection on polycarbonate filters was implemented and advanced, including increasing the number of successive samples per location and changing sample storage procedures. By using DNA analysis (real-time polymerase chain reaction) to target Bacillus spp., we found that in the slick areas, these surfactant-associated bacteria tended to reside mostly in subsurface waters, lending support to the concept that the surfactants they may produce move to the surface where they accumulate under calm conditions and enrich the sea surface microlayer

Six-dimensional Supergravity and Projective Superfields

We propose a superspace formulation of N=(1,0) conformal supergravity in six dimensions. The corresponding superspace constraints are invariant under super-Weyl transformations generated by a real scalar parameter. The known variant Weyl super-multiplet is recovered by coupling the geometry to a super-3-form tensor multiplet. Isotwistor variables are introduced and used to define projective superfields. We formulate a locally supersymmetric and super-Weyl invariant action principle in projective superspace. Some families of dynamical supergravity-matter systems are presented.Comment: 39 pages; v3: some modifications in section 2; equations (2.3), (2.14b), (2.16) and (2.17) correcte

Generation of cloned transgenic pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids

Meat products are generally low in omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids, which are beneficial to human health. We describe the generation of cloned pigs that express a humanized Caenorhabditis elegans gene, fat-1, encoding an n-3 fatty acid desaturase. The hfat-1 transgenic pigs produce high levels of n-3 fatty acids from n-6 analogs, and their tissues have a significantly reduced ratio of n-6/n-3 fatty acids (P < 0.001). © 2006 Nature Publishing Group

Factors Affecting the Amount of Puffing in Tomatoes.

64 p

Analysis of surfactant-associated bacteria in the sea surface microlayer using deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing and synthetic aperture radar

The sea surface microlayer (SML) is the upper 1 mm of the ocean, where Earth’s biogeochemical processes occur between the ocean and atmosphere. It is physicochemically distinct from the water below and highly variable in space and time due to changing physical conditions. Some microorganisms influence the composition of the SML by producing surfactants for biological functions that accumulate on the surface, decrease surface tension, and create slicks. Slicks can be visible to the eye and in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery. This study focuses on surfactant-associated bacteria in the near-surface layer and their role in slick formation where oil is present

Homologous over-extension: a challenge for iterative similarity searches

We have characterized a novel type of PSI-BLAST error, homologous over-extension (HOE), using embedded PFAM domain queries on searches against a reference library containing Pfam-annotated UniProt sequences and random synthetic sequences. PSI-BLAST makes two types of errors: alignments to non-homologous regions and HOE alignments that begin in a homologous region, but extend beyond the homology into neighboring sequence regions. When the neighboring sequence region contains a non-homologous domain, PSI-BLAST can incorporate the unrelated sequence into its position specific scoring matrix, which then finds non-homologous proteins with significant expectation values. HOE accounts for the largest fraction of the initial false positive (FP) errors, and the largest fraction of FPs at iteration 5. In searches against complete protein sequences, 5–9% of alignments at iteration 5 are non-homologous. HOE frequently begins in a partial protein domain; when partial domains are removed from the library, HOE errors decrease from 16 to 3% of weighted coverage (hard queries; 35–5% for sampled queries) and no-error searches increase from 2 to 58% weighed coverage (hard; 16–78% sampled). When HOE is reduced by not extending previously found sequences, PSI-BLAST specificity improves 4–8-fold, with little loss in sensitivity