Paclitaxel, vincristine, oxaliplatin, and bortezomib are cancer chemotherapy drugs with adverse effects that include chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain (CINP) as well as depression of behavior and mood. In the clinical setting, opioids are often used concurrently with or following chemotherapy to treat pain related to the cancer or CINP, but repeated opioid exposure can also increase the risk of opioid abuse. This dissertation evaluated the effect of chemotherapy treatment on motivated behaviors and opioid reward in rats. The main findings of this evaluation are as follows: (1) Chemotherapy, at doses that produce robust and sustained mechanical hypersensitivity produce only weak or nonexistent depression of positively reinforced operant responding maintained either by electrical brain stimulation in an assay of intracranial self-stimulation or by food pellets in an assay of food-maintained responding. (2) There was no correlation between the expression of mechanical hypersensitivity and depression of motivated behaviors across individual animals, suggesting that these two effects of chemotherapy do not share common mechanisms of action. (3) Mechanical hypersensitivity, but not behavioral depression could be reversed with morphine. (4) The class of chemotherapeutic used in preclinical models is a determinant of the severity of effects on neuropathy-related endpoints and on the time course of these effects. (5) Chemotherapy does not protect against the rewarding effects of repeated morphine administration and does not alter the time course of the enhancement of reward with repeated morphine exposure. These findings suggest that administration of chemotherapy to rats induces mechanical hypersensitivity while failing to decrease behaviors dependent on mesolimbic dopamine signaling or protecting against morphine abuse-related effects. While apparent that chemotherapy can produce peripheral neuropathy, the data in this dissertation does not support the hypothesis that chemotherapy can produce behavioral depressant manifestations of chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain (CINP) in rats.

The purpose of this study was to determine if team cohesion could be enhanced for 9th grade female basketball teams with the implementation of a 14-week intervention program. The intervention program was designed from cohesion building strategies proposed in the literature with the help of three coaches and a leading sport psychologist in the field of cohesion. 41 ninth grade female basketball players belonging to four teams participated in the study. The Group Environment Questionnaire was used to measure cohesion. It was administered on the third week of the season and again at the end. The data were analyzed using both the individual and the team as the unit of analysis. The findings varied according to which unit of analysis was used. When the team was used, no posttest differences were found, however, the effect sizes suggested that the intervention was effective for the task subscales of the GEQ. A lack of statistical power for the team analysis greatly reduced the probability of finding that the meaningful differences were statistically significant. When the individual was used, the intervention was found to be statistically detrimental for the task subscales. The effect sizes supported this finding. The qualitative data that was collected suggested that the coaches believed the intervention had practical utility, and was effective. While this study did not empirically show that the intervention was effective, it did demonstrate that the intervention is practical enough to implement. Furthermore, the qualitative data and the effect sizes for the team analysis provide some evidence that the intervention may have been effective for the task dimension of team cohesion. Therefore this study produced an intervention that can be used as a starting point for future cohesion building investigations. / Graduation date: 1997

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-62).

No description available.

Thesis (M.App.Psy.)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed March 19, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-63)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Penny L. Deiner, Dept. of Human Development and Family Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-89). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-77). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves v. 2, 389-428).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-77). Also available on the Internet.