Thesis (M. A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2006. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Robert R. Hunt; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 35-37).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 23, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

One of the most intriguing and enduring issues in contemporary developmental cognitive neuroscience centers on the development of the ability to remember past experiences and the neural systems which support this capacity. Over the past 25 years, through methodological advancements and direct challenges to established assumptions, the focus of this developmental question has shifted to highlight the second half of the first year of life as the time when true explicit memory functionally emerges and begins to rapidly develop. The purpose of the following study was to test specific hypotheses regarding the biobehavioral development of explicit memory during infancy and present a new approach to studying the behavioral and physiological expression of this system. This study, which was guided by hypothesized neural substrates of this memory system, is the first direct investigation of continuous brain electrical activity during both the encoding and retrieval phases of explicit memory processing in infants. Memory-related differences in behavior and task-related brain activity in individual cortical areas were of particular interest. The results of this study provided some support for the hypothesis that baseline-to-task changes in EEG power can distinguish between successful and unsuccessful ordered-recall memory. Specifically, decreases in brain-electrical activity relative to a baseline period were found at both frontal and temporal locations during stimulus encoding and retrieval for infants who failed the recall tests. However, either no change, or increases in EEG power at frontal and temporal sites was related to successful performance on this task. In addition, different patterns of brain-electrical activity were present for correct and incorrect responses from the same child. This study contributes to our understanding of the biobehavioral expression of infant explicit memory in three main ways. First, changes in both frontal and temporal lobe activity are directly involved in explicit memory processing both during event encoding as well as retrieval. Second, this work provides evidence of a developmentally appropriate and valid pattern of electrophysiology specific to explicit memory processing. Finally, this study bridges the gap between a classic behavioral task of infant memory (which has been conceptually linked to neuropsychological data) and current developmental cognitive neuroscience. / Ph. D.

Prescription drug advertisements are commonly seen in magazines and on television, and as a result, the public is familiar with them. Many drug ads are targeted toward older adults, who tend to use more medications, because they suffer from more chronic conditions than younger adults. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of drug advertising at persuading older adults to ask physicians for specific medications remains uncertain. Older adults’ explicit memory for drug ads is poor, but their implicit memory for drug ads may be better. Therefore, older adults may be implicitly persuaded by drug ads even when they cannot explicitly remember seeing them. The current study measured implicit memory with an incidental ratings exercise and an indirect test of preference; explicit memory was measured with intentional studying and a direct test of recognition. The purposes of the study were to compare implicit and explicit memory for drug ads in older and younger adults, to determine whether age differences in memory are affected by salient information or anxiety, and to demonstrate that a test of implicit memory may be useful in estimating advertising effectiveness. The results showed no age difference for implicit memory for drug ads, but an age difference was found for explicit memory for drug ads. However, contrary to hypotheses, neither salient information nor anxiety had an effect on implicit or explicit memory. The results were consistent with previous research demonstrating implicit memory in the absence of explicit memory. Although older adults had slightly worse explicit memory, both implicit and explicit memory for drug ads was generally good in both groups. The results were also obtained within the everyday context of prescription drug advertising, which extends memory research to an important real-world setting. Ethical considerations for research on aging and advertising are discussed. Drug ads are designed to be persuasive, but ads should be carefully designed to inform consumers, rather than to manipulate them. The implicit memory manipulation succeeded in demonstrating that ads are persuasive, suggesting that a complete assessment of advertising effectiveness should include a test of implicit memory.

Many college students struggle to perform well on exams in the early morning. Although students drink caffeinated beverages to feel more awake, it is unclear whether these actually improve performance. After consuming coffee (caffeinated or decaffeinated), college-age adults completed implicit and explicit memory tasks in the early morning and late afternoon (Experiment 1). During the morning, participants ingesting caffeine demonstrated a striking improvement in explicit memory, but not implicit memory. Caffeine did not alter memory performance in the afternoon. In Experiment 2, participants engaged in cardiovascular exercise in order to examine whether increases in physiological arousal similarly improved memory. Despite clear increases in physiological arousal, exercise did not improve memory performance compared to a stretching control condition. These results suggest that caffeine has a specific benefit for memory during students' non-optimal time of day-early morning. These findings have real-world implications for students taking morning exams.

The astounding capacity for learning ranks among the nervous system’s most impressive features. This thesis comprises studies employing varied approaches to improve understanding, at the level of neural circuits, of the brain’s capacity for learning. The first part of the thesis contains investigations of hippocampal circuitry – both theoretical work and experimental work in the mouse Mus musculus – as a model system for declarative memory. To begin, Chapter 2 presents a theory of hippocampal memory storage and retrieval that reflects nonlinear dendritic processing within hippocampal pyramidal neurons. As a prelude to the experimental work that comprises the remainder of this part, Chapter 3 describes an open source software platform that we have developed for analysis of data acquired with in vivo Ca2+ imaging, the main experimental technique used throughout the remainder of this part of the thesis. As a first application of this technique, Chapter 4 characterizes the content of signaling at synapses between GABAergic neurons of the medial septum and interneurons in stratum oriens of hippocampal area CA1. Chapter 5 then combines these techniques with optogenetic, pharmacogenetic, and pharmacological manipulations to uncover inhibitory circuit mechanisms underlying fear learning. The second part of this thesis focuses on the cerebellum-like electrosensory lobe in the weakly electric mormyrid fish Gnathonemus petersii, as a model system for non-declarative memory. In Chapter 6, we study how short-duration EOD motor commands are recoded into a complex temporal basis in the granule cell layer, which can be used to cancel Purkinje-like cell firing to the longer duration and temporally varying EOD-driven sensory responses. In Chapter 7, we consider not only the temporal aspects of the granule cell code, but also the encoding of body position provided from proprioceptive and efference copy sources. Together these studies clarify how the cerebellum-like circuitry of the electrosensory lobe combines information of different forms and then uses this combined information to predict the complex dependence of sensory responses on body position and timing relative to electric organ discharge.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-71).

Thesis (M.A.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in Psychology. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-62). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pMQ99301

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1998. / Title from title page screen, viewed July 14, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Jeff Laurent, Salvatore J. Catanzaro (co-chairs), Connie B. Horton, Alvin E. House. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-83) and abstract. Also available in print.