Results Search Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Sympathetic ganglia formation in the chick peripheral nervous system: Author: Kasemeier-Kulesa, Jennifer Caroline; Date: 2005-12-15; Program: Neuroscience; Abstract: The neural crest is a unique population of pluripotent cells that are crucial in vertebrate embryogenesis. In the trunk, NCCs migrate along a ventromedial pathway give rise to the dorsal root ganglia or the sympathetic ganglia (SG), or follow a dorsolateral pathway and give rise to melanocytes. Intriguingly, NCCs following the ventromedial pathway migrate in a metameric pattern through the rostral half somite and avoid the caudal somite and this is thought to dictate the metameric pattern of the SG. Static analyses have characterized the development of these structures, but timelapse imaging o...; Download File | View full details

Analysis of the expression and function of chicken protocadherin 1 in neural crest migration and peripheral nervous system formation: Author: Bononi, Judy; Date: 2007-08-15; Program: Neuroscience; Abstract: The necessary steps of development from a single cell to a multi-celled functional organism are complex. Many molecules have been identified and their roles characterized in this process. One interesting population of cells includes the highly migratory neural crest cells (NCCs) unique to the vertebrate embryo and existing transiently during early embryonic development. The NCCs migrate along specific pathways at specific timepoints, stop at target locations, differentiate and give rise to a variety of cell types and tissues. Trunk NCCs must choose between two different migratory pathways: the...; Download File | View full details

Characterization of the neural codebook in an invertebrate sensory system: Author: Aldworth, Zane Nathan; Date: 2007-12-15; Program: Neuroscience; Abstract: An outstanding problem in Neuroscience is to describe the relationship between various stimulus sources in the environment and how they are represented by patterns of activity in nervous systems, a problem generically referred to as 'neural coding'. Most previous methods developed to address this problem have assumed a linear relationship between environmental stimuli and neural responses, and generally relied on measures of the mean state of the environment preceding neural activity to characterize the stimulus-response transformation. The goal of this thesis is to develop new methods of char...; Download File | View full details

Mouse and stem cell models of frontotemporal dementia: Author: Orr, Miranda Ethel; Date: 2012-05-15; Program: Neuroscience; Abstract: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent brain disease in the United States, and an escalating health concern. AD patient brains acquire hallmark protein aggregates, referred to as senile A beta plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs), that coincide with brain cell loss and dementia. A subset of AD patients carry mutant genes. Our understanding of AD largely relies on model systems that express these gene variants. Mice engineered to express AD-mutant human genes develop A beta plaques, but fail to develop the tau-containing NFTs or cell loss. Mutant tau variants are required to induc...; Download File | View full details