Storytelling can stimulate learning by delivering scientific content within a narrative that increases comprehension and engagement. In this article I describe the coevolutionary arms race between toxic newts and predatory garter snakes. This engaging story centers on the use of a deadly neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX) as an antipredator…

The dopamine system has been implicated in decision-making particularly when associated with effortful behavior. We examined acute optogenetic stimulation of dopamine cells in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) as mice engaged in an effort-based decision-making task. Tyrosine hydroxylase-Cre mice were injected with Cre-dependent ChR2 or eYFP control…

Strong evidence supports a role for protein degradation in fear memory formation. However, these data have been largely done in only male animals. Here, we found that following contextual fear conditioning, females, but not males, had increased levels of proteasome activity and K48 polyubiquitin protein targeting in the dorsal hippocampus, the…

Case studies are valuable tools for instruction but are often limited to a single topic and a single class period. Courses such as evolution that synthesize multiple concepts around a common theme, however, can use a single case study type project that extends over the entire semester to develop and link core concepts. A central theme in…

Behavioral flexibility is important in a changing environment. Previous research suggests that systems consolidation, a long-term poststorage process that alters memory traces, may reduce behavioral flexibility. However, exactly how systems consolidation affects flexibility is unknown. Here, we tested how systems consolidation affects: (1)…

Animals in a natural environment confront many sensory cues. Some of these cues bias behavioral decisions independent of experience, and action selection can reveal a stimulus-response (S-R) connection. However, in a changing environment it would be a benefit for an animal to update behavioral action selection based on experience, and learning…

In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), functional behaviors such as checking that a door is locked become dysfunctional, maladaptive, and debilitating. However, it is currently unknown how aversive and appetitive motivations interact to produce functional and dysfunctional behavior in OCD. Here we show a double dissociation in the effects of…

Students may exhibit two forms of cognitive biases, belief and hindsight bias, in evaluating a scientific experiment. Counter to disagreement, they may only believe an outcome that agrees with their belief to be more predictable in hindsight than foresight. The focus of this research is on the relationship between these biases. Students were…

Studies have shown that neonate rodents exhibit high ability to learn a preference for novel odors associated with thermo-tactile stimuli that mimics maternal care. Artificial odors paired with vigorous strokes in rat pups younger than 10 postnatal days (P), but not older, rapidly induce an orientation-approximation behavior toward the conditioned…

Exposure therapy, which focuses on extinguishing fear-triggering cues and contexts, is widely used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet, PTSD patients who received successful exposure therapy are vulnerable to relapse of fear response after a period of time, a phenomenon known as spontaneous recovery (SR). Increasing evidence…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are tools used to introduce students to authentic participation in science. Several specific CUREs have been shown to benefit students' interest and retention in the biological sciences. Nevertheless, CUREs vary greatly in terms of their context, methodology, and degree of research…

No studies to date have examined whether immediate-early gene (IEG) activation is driven by context memory recall. To address this question, we utilized the context preexposure facilitation effect (CPFE) paradigm. In CPFE, animals acquire contextual fear conditioning through hippocampus-dependent rapid retrieval of a previously formed contextual…

Modulation of cortical network connectivity is crucial for an adaptive response to experience. In the rat barrel cortex, long-term sensory stimulation induces cortical network modifications and neuronal response changes of which the molecular basis is unknown. Here, we show that long-term somatosensory stimulation by enriched environment…

Active avoidance (AA) is an important paradigm for studying mechanisms of aversive instrumental learning, pathological anxiety, and active coping. Unfortunately, AA neurocircuits are poorly understood, partly because behavior is highly variable and reflects a competition between Pavlovian reactions and instrumental actions. Here we exploited the…

BDNF-induced signaling is essential for the development of the central nervous system and critical for plasticity in adults. Mature BDNF signals through TrkB, while its precursor proBDNF employs p75[superscript NTR], resulting in activation of signaling cascades with opposite effects on neuronal survival, growth cone decisions, and synaptic…