Zebrafish is a frequently used model organism with an array of transgenic lines that have been used indevelopmental and physiological studies. We aim to generate novel transgenic zebrafish reporter lines to study subpopulations of spinal neurons in vivo. The gene editing system called CRISPR/Cas9 system was used to knock in reporter genes such as green fluorescent protein (GFP) or Gal4 transcription factor, to generate transgenic fish lines. Zebrafish embryos were injected with gRNAs targeting gabrb1 or nr4a2a and GFP or Gal4 plasmid, respectively. F0 larvae were screened, positive fish were raised until sexual maturity, and founders characterized to verify germline insertion. Three founders were found for gabrb1 and the location and the direction of the insert verified. The GFP expression was studied during development and differential expression patterns were identified whereas all founders had expression in brain and spinal cord. In parallel, positive fish from the Gal4 injections were raised and will be screened. Immunohistochemistry was performed to check if nr4a2a is expressed in the same cells as known neuronal markers. However, no co-localization was detected. The three gabrb1 founders identified in this study highlight the challenges into creating stable transgenic lines recapitulating true expression of the gene of interest. Sequencing, in-situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry should be performed to verify the line. A possible reason for the varying expression may be that through the knock-in we may interfere with regions regulating gene. The nr4a2a-Gal4 line will be used to perform functional studies. Those experiments will be performed using reporter genes, such as opsins or GCaMP, controlled by Upstream Activation Sequence (UAS). These transgenic lines will provide important insights regarding neuronal subpopulations that express gabrb1 and nr4a2a to unravelhow the locomotor network is formed.

Everyone gets frustrated over lack of motivation or focus sometimes, but people with ADHD have struggles of related character every single day in their lives. This struggle may be difficult for people to understand. Another factor not well understood is the large discrepancyin the ADHD prevalence between males and females. The most obvious way to study this sex biased male to female ratio of ADHD is by looking at the correlation between sex hormones and ADHD. Moreover, the biggest difference in hormonal profiles between the sexes is the menstrual cycle. Some research exists on testosterone and ADHD but research is limited on more female associated sex hormones such as estradiol. A systematic literature review is now conducted with search words relating to ADHD and estrogen. The results from this review imply that estrogen may mediate ADHD symptom presentation by interacting with other sex hormones. It is further indicated that estrogen receptors may affect ADHD symptom presentation, but this finding needs to be supported by replicating research.

Optimism refers to peoples’ general tendency to anticipate good outcomes in areas that are important to them. Numerous studies have shown that optimism is significantly correlated with improved physical and mental health. Optimism can come to an overly optimistic degree, called optimism bias. People generally expect better outcomes and fewer negative events to happen for themselves in the future compared to the average person. There are two sides to this: being optimistically biased might lead to risky behavior, but it might also ease people's worries about the future. To have a consistently negative view is suggested to correlate with depressive symptoms and worsened health. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the neural correlates and functional markers of optimism and optimism bias. Optimism is suggested to correlate with gray-matter volume in the thalamus, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and bilateral putamen. The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) have a crucial role in dismissing undesirable information and self referential processing. Research regarding this issue might be beneficial for further understanding of the connection between optimism and well-being.

Losing a loved one can lead to bereavement grief. It is often accompanied by anxiety, profound sadness, sleep disturbance and lingering depression. Prolonged grief can affect the ability to function properly, through overall reduction in cognitive function. Being able to find effective interventions early on in the grieving process for the bereaved is essential in preventing disorders associated with prolonged sorrow. Mindfulness research has shown that it can improve well-being and a variety of conditions such as stress, anxiety, worry, depression and disturbed sleep. But the research into mindfulness as a potential grief intervention is relatively new and lacking. The aim of this study is to see if the research and literature on the subject can tell us about mindfulness interventions and their benefit to those experiencing bereavement: in particular, the loss of a family member. Four studies were included, making this a more explorative research. In all studies, grief-related psychological conditions as well as grief-levels decreased after the mindfulness intervention, such as depression symptoms, trauma symptoms, anxiety, and any difficulties in emotion regulation.Those with elevated depression or traumatic bereavement seem to experience a larger change in all eviated symptoms after the mindfulness intervention. The findings indicated that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy helped with the ability to emotionally regulate as well as decreasing spontaneous mind-wandering during resting-state. It also seemed to enhance cognitive control and working memory.

In the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a rubber hand is placed in front of the participant with the participant's hand out of sight. If both hands are touched simultaneously, the illusion typically occurs. Between RHI studies, differences can be seen in the setup, and results of the illusion strength are inconsistent. One of these differences can be the moving RHI, where the real and rubber hand make the same movements to induce the illusion. The differences led to uncertainty regarding the influence of spatial configuration (i.e., an arrangement of the setup within three-dimensional space) on the illusion of body ownership. With this meta-analysis, I quantify the illusion strength in the moving RHI to be able to conclude if spatial configuration influences the results. A total of nine studies were included that had a total of 391 participants. The results show that the synchronous condition has a stronger illusory effect than the asynchronous condition. However, due to heterogeneity, the sample size may not represent the general population. Sub-group analysis showed no major difference in the illusion strength between a vertical and horizontal setup. These observations do not correspond with classical RHI studies in which vertical and horizontal setups were compared. However, in this meta-analysis, only moving RHI studies were included. In the moving RHI, the experimenter does not enter the visual receptive field of the participant, which may explain why no differences between the setups were found. The results of this meta-analysis cannot be seen as definitive; more research is necessary.

In recent years, several studies have discovered traces of Alzheimer's (AD) biomarkers in a large portion of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), which have been associated with subsequent dementia (PDD). However, the manifestation of AD biomarkers in PD is not fully understood. At present, few studies have investigated how common AD biomarkers are in newly diagnosed and unmedicated patients with PD. This cross-sectional cohort study investigated whether AD biomarkers were present in unmedicated and newly diagnosed patients with PD and patients with PD and overlapping clinical symptoms (cognitive impairment, depression, olfactory dysfunction). Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of AD biomarkers Amyloid-β-42 (Aβ42), phosphorylated-tau (p-tau), and total-tau (t-tau) were assessed in 343 patients with the mean age of 68,69 (SD=9,60), including 31 healthy controls with the mean age of 68,90 (SD=5,64). The participants were recruited from The New Parkinson Patient in Umea (NYPUM & PARKNY). The results showed a significant difference in CSF AD biomarkers between patients with PD and healthy controls, but not in patients with PD and overlapping clinical symptoms. The results point to the presence of AD pathology in early PD; however, the presence of AD pathology could not be further strengthened by the clinical overlapping symptoms. More prospective studies on newly diagnosed patients with PD need to be carried out to investigate the prognostic values of the presence of AD pathology found in PD.

Aggressive behaviour can be defined as actions that are believed and intended to cause harm to another individual that does not desire to be the target of such actions. Different situations can warrant aggressive behaviour, such as when an individual is posed with a threat. Aggressive behaviour is one of the ways individuals can deal with threats arising from their environments, and furthermore, aggressive behaviour can also be used to deal with social threats that arise from the interaction between two members of the same species. Aggressive behaviour is correlated with higher emotional arousal, and individuals that illustrate aggressive tendencies should be more sensitive to arousal when confronted with a social threat. This thesis acts upon this notion by hypothesizing that individuals who score higher on a tendency for aggression measurements should exhibit higher emotional arousal when exposed to a cue of social threat. Cues of social threats are thought to be induced by exposing the participant to either an angry face or a face with a high facial width to height ratio. The emotional response is measured with electroencephalography, more specifically looking at the late positive potential. No support for the hypothesis was found between high and low aggression groups. The facial width to height ratios proposed nature of being a cue of social threat becomes contested as the results were conflicting regarding the robustness of the facial width to height ratio’s effect. Even if there were no statistically significant differences found between the two groups, it might not be subject for dismissal as the sample population could be considered a low aggression population overall.

The essay aims to provide an overview of existing research on moral cognition and its neural correlates, as well as to highlight aspects in which the findings from the field of cognitive neuroscience can add to the understanding of the challenges that arise from having artificial systems as moral decision-makers. Morality is an important characteristic of the human way of life and a central mechanism in the modern society. Research suggests that morality has evolved as a function to promote cooperation and prosocial behaviour. Morality has been a topic of investigation in several interdisciplinary fields and often includes the exploration of reason and emotion and their respective roles. Contemporary technological advances include the increased presence of artificial intelligence (AI) that aims to simulate the human mind. Empirical evidence suggests that deontological responses are more closely related to emotional components of moral cognition and linked to increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In contrast, utilitarian responses appear to be more reliant on reason and a more complex neural network that is linked to increased activity in primarily dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. AI has successfully accomplished certain elements of simulating human cognition. However, key findings suggest that the integration of reason and emotion is essential which is possibly challenging for AI to fully replicate.

Mindfulness is a form of meditation commonly used as a treatment against symptoms likestress, anxiety and depression that often arises in relation to chronic illnesses like cancer. Research have yielded positive results for mindfulness as a treatment for these symptoms butalso for improvements in attention in healthy people following mindfulness-training. Thepresent study used a within-group design where participants acted as their own control, withmeasures taken before and after a two-week internet-based meditation-intervention withexercises 5 days a week. This was done to investigate if mindfulness-training had any effect onthree different subsystems of attention: alerting, orienting and conflict monitoring. Analysis ofthe results yielded a significant difference in conflict monitoring from pre- to posttest whichsuggests that participants became more resilient towards distractors following mindfulnesstraining. Future research should focus on including more participants and to control fordifferences between already existing groups, for example gender- or age-related differences. / Mindfulness är en form av meditation som vanligtvis användssom en behandling mot symptomsom stress, ångest och depression som ofta uppstår i samband med kroniska sjukdomar somexempelvis cancer. Forskning har visat positiva resultat för mindfulness som behandling fördessa symptom men även på förbättringar i uppmärksamhet hos friska människor till följd avmindfulness-träning. Denna studie använde en inomgrupps-design där deltagarna agerade somsin egen kontroll, med mätningar före och efter en två-veckors internetbaserad mindfulnessintervention med träning 5 dagar i veckan. Detta gjordes för att undersöka om mindfulnessträning har någon påverkan på tre olika subsystem av uppmärksamhet: Beredskap, Orienteringoch Konfliktövervakning. Analys av resultaten visade på en signifikant skillnad ikonfliktövervakning från för-test till efter-test vilket tyder på att deltagarna blev mermotståndskraftiga mot distraktorer vid uppmärksamhetsövningar till följd av mindfulnessträning. Vidare forskning borde fokusera på att inkludera fler deltagare och kontrollera förskillnader mellan redan existerande grupper som exempelvis köns- eller ålders-relateradeskillnader.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by fear and avoidance of social interactions and situations in which an individual is being the focus of attention. This current thesis aims to examine the efficacy of pharmacological treatment, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in individuals with a generalized social anxiety disorder (gSAD) in comparison with placebo (no active medication). In this systematic review, Scopus and Web of Science were searched for relevant research regarding the efficacy of the SSRI medication (paroxetine, sertraline, fluvoxamine and escitalopram) in comparison with placebo. Sixteen articles were included in this analysis. Results demonstrated that SSRI medication has greater efficacy in comparison with placebo both in short- and long-term time, prevent relapse in the long-term treatment of SAD and had a beneficial effect on different areas of individuals life's such as work, performance, romantic relationships etc.