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- Title
- Face processing in persons with and without Alzheimer's disease.
- Creator
- Winchester, Jeanna., Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences
- Abstract/Description
-
This study aimed to understand the differences in strength or coordination of brain regions involved in processing faces in the presence of aging and/or progressing neuropathology (Alzheimer's disease). To this end, Experiment 1 evaluated age-related differences in basic face processing and the effects of familiarity in face processing. Overall, face processing in younger (22-35yrs) and older participants (63-83yrs) recruited a broadly distributed network of brain activity, but the...
Show moreThis study aimed to understand the differences in strength or coordination of brain regions involved in processing faces in the presence of aging and/or progressing neuropathology (Alzheimer's disease). To this end, Experiment 1 evaluated age-related differences in basic face processing and the effects of familiarity in face processing. Overall, face processing in younger (22-35yrs) and older participants (63-83yrs) recruited a broadly distributed network of brain activity, but the distribution of activity varied depending on the age of the individual. The younger population utilized regions of the occipitotemporal, medial frontal and posterior parietal cortices while the older population recruited a concentrated occipitotemporal network. The younger participants were also sensitive to the type of face presented, as Novel faces were associated with greater mean BOLD activity than either the Famous or Relatives faces. Interestingly, Relatives faces were associated with greater mean B OLD activity in more regions of the brain than found in any other analysis in Exp. 1, spanning the inferior frontal, medial temporal and inferior parietal cortices. In contrast, the older adults were not sensitive to the type of face presented, which could reflect a difference in cognitive strategies used by the older population when presented with this type of face stimuli. Experiment 2 evaluated face processing, familiarity in face processing and also emphasized the interactive roles autobiographical processing and memory recency play in processing familiar faces in mature adults (MA; 45-55yrs), older adults (OA; 70-92yrs) and patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD; 70-92yrs)., MA participants had greater mean BOLD activity values in more regions of the brain than observed in either of the older adult populations, spanning regions of the medial frontal, medial temporal, inferior parietal and occipital cortices. OA, in contrast, utilized a concentrated frontal and medial temporal network and AD participants had the greatest deficit in BOLD activity overall.Age-related differences in processing faces, in processing the type of face presented, in autobiographical information processing and in processing the recency of a memory were noted, as well as differences due to the deleterious effects of AD.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2009
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/199330
- Subject Headings
- Face perception, Cognition, Age factors, Human face recognition, Alzheimer's disease, Facial expression, Physiological aspects
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- "I distinctly remember you!": an investigation of memory for faces with unusual features.
- Creator
- Keif, Autumn., Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology
- Abstract/Description
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Many errors in recognition are made because various features of a stimulus are attended inefficiently. Those features are not bound together and can then be confused with other information. One of the most common types of these errors is conjunction errors. These happen when mismatched features of memories are combined to form a composite memory. This study tests how likely conjunction errors, along with other recognition errors, occur when participants watch videos of people both with and...
Show moreMany errors in recognition are made because various features of a stimulus are attended inefficiently. Those features are not bound together and can then be confused with other information. One of the most common types of these errors is conjunction errors. These happen when mismatched features of memories are combined to form a composite memory. This study tests how likely conjunction errors, along with other recognition errors, occur when participants watch videos of people both with and without unusual facial features performing actions after a week time lag. It was hypothesized that participants would falsely recognize actresses in the conjunction item condition over the other conditions. The likelihood of falsely recognizing a new person increased when presented with a feature, but the conjunction items overall were most often falsely recognized.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2012
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3342207
- Subject Headings
- Face perception, Human face recognition, Facial expression, Physiological aspects, Recollection (Psychology)
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- The Happiness/Anger Superiority Effect: the influence of the gender of perceiver and poser in facial expression recognition.
- Creator
- Peaco, Sophia., Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology
- Abstract/Description
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Two experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of poser and perceiver gender on the Happiness/Anger Superiority effect and the Female Advantage in facial expression recognition. Happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions were presented on male and female faces under Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). Participants of both genders indicated when the presented faces broke through the suppression. In the second experiment, angry and happy expressions were reduced to 50% intensity. At...
Show moreTwo experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of poser and perceiver gender on the Happiness/Anger Superiority effect and the Female Advantage in facial expression recognition. Happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions were presented on male and female faces under Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). Participants of both genders indicated when the presented faces broke through the suppression. In the second experiment, angry and happy expressions were reduced to 50% intensity. At full intensity, there was no difference in the reaction time for female neutral and angry faces, but male faces showed a difference in detection between all expressions. Across experiments, male faces were detected later than female faces for all facial expressions. Happiness was generally detected faster than anger, except when on female faces at 50% intensity. No main effect for perceiver gender emerged. It was concluded that happiness is superior to anger in CFS, and that poser gender affects facial expression recognition.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3360964
- Subject Headings
- Face perception, Human face recognition, Facial expression, Physiological aspects, Biometric identification, Recollection (Psychology), Recognition (Psychology)
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Craniofacial Form and Temporalis Configuration in Middle Pleistocene Hominins.
- Creator
- Lucas, Lynn, McCarthy, Robert, Florida Atlantic University
- Abstract/Description
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This study focused on the temporalis configuration in Middle Pleistocene hominins and how that configuration is correlated with various structures in the craniofacial complex. Three hypotheses were tested using univariate comparisons, regression, and scaling analyses. Results showed that Middle Pleistocene hominins have small anterior temporalis muscles relative to the size oftheir faces, contrary to expectation. This discrepancy may be explained by a decrease in the size of the temporal...
Show moreThis study focused on the temporalis configuration in Middle Pleistocene hominins and how that configuration is correlated with various structures in the craniofacial complex. Three hypotheses were tested using univariate comparisons, regression, and scaling analyses. Results showed that Middle Pleistocene hominins have small anterior temporalis muscles relative to the size oftheir faces, contrary to expectation. This discrepancy may be explained by a decrease in the size of the temporal fossa as a consequence of postorbital constriction concurrent with encephalization. Additionally, this configuration may have implications for the biomechanics of chewing, rendering the masticatory structures of Middle Pleistocene hominins less efficient than in other hominins. Future studies in this area should analyze the size of the temporal fossa in conjunction with rates of encephalization, using cranial capacity as a measure of vault size. Such analyses, coupled with comparisons of temporalis muscle size, will better explain the relationships suggested here.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2007
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00000934
- Subject Headings
- Human evolution--Research, Physiology, Comparative, Paleontology--Pleistocene, Pleistocene-Holocene boundary
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Studies on the role of vitamin D in asthma patients from a South Florida pulmonary practice.
- Creator
- Munim, Amjad., Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Biological Sciences
- Abstract/Description
-
Vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency is widespread in asthma, and epidemiological studies point to an association between low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level and poor asthma control and increased severity. In humans. Vitamin D is principally derived from sunlight induced cutaneous conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D and oral supplementation. We sought to determine if established and chronic-persistent adult asthma patients from a South-Florida pulmonary patient population, with...
Show moreVitamin D insufficiency/deficiency is widespread in asthma, and epidemiological studies point to an association between low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level and poor asthma control and increased severity. In humans. Vitamin D is principally derived from sunlight induced cutaneous conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D and oral supplementation. We sought to determine if established and chronic-persistent adult asthma patients from a South-Florida pulmonary patient population, with abundant sunshine availability and oral vitamin D supplementation exhibit vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency. A trend to vitamin D insufficiency was observed in approximately 65% of both adult asthma patients and apparently healthy (non-asthmatic) volunteers. . The transcription factors required for Th9 conversion, PU.1 and IRF-4, were down-regulated by vitamin D. The generation of Th9 cells was inhibited equally by vitamin D and dexamethasone when used alone, but the effect was additive when both steroids were used in combination. Our studies using non-specifically stimulated cells were extended by analyzing the effect of vitamin D on allergen specific stimulation. The response of CD4+ T cells obtained from the blood of house dust mite positive asthmatics was studied. House dust mite allergen elicited a classical Th2 phenotype response (IL-4, IL-5, IL-9, and IL-13 cytokine profile) and vitamin D effectively inhibited those key Th2 cytokines. We conclude that vitamin D appears to be of significant clinical benefit in our cohort of patients, i.e., established chronic adult human asthma, by down-regulating key immune cells including Th9, Th17, and Th2 involved in this disorder.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3360948
- Subject Headings
- Vitamin D, Health aspects, Vitamin D, Physiological effect, Vitamin D, Therapeutic use, Vitamin D, Physiology, Vitamin D in human nutrition, Lungs, Etiology
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Finite element analysis and modeling of the anterior cruciate ligament in the human knee.
- Creator
- Savage, Tabatha Jordan, Hashemi, Javad, Florida Atlantic University, College of Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering
- Abstract/Description
-
The Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) resists excessive anterior translation and internal rotation of the tibia during athletic activities and stabilizes the knee. In the US, annually, over 200,000 cases of ACL disruption are reported. The impact on the quality of life of the subject and its cost to healthcare is tremendous. The objectives of this study were to determine any significant associations between the size of the tibial eminence and ACL injury and to develop a finite element model...
Show moreThe Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) resists excessive anterior translation and internal rotation of the tibia during athletic activities and stabilizes the knee. In the US, annually, over 200,000 cases of ACL disruption are reported. The impact on the quality of life of the subject and its cost to healthcare is tremendous. The objectives of this study were to determine any significant associations between the size of the tibial eminence and ACL injury and to develop a finite element model for structural analysis. The results suggest that the size of the tibial eminence plays a role in loading the ACL and is therefore a risk factor. In addition to the epidemiological analysis, a finite element model of the knee was developed that with added modifications can be used for complex knee loading situations. The results in this thesis may be used to develop strategies for ACL injury prevention and rehabilitation.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2014
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004327, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004327
- Subject Headings
- Arthroscopy, Athletic injuries -- Prevention, Biomedical materials, First aid in illness and injury, Human mechanics, Joints -- Pathophysiology, Sports -- Physiological aspects, Sports medicine
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Investigation of human visual spatial attention with fMRI and Granger Causality analysis.
- Creator
- Tang, Wei, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences
- Abstract/Description
-
Contemporary understanding of human visual spatial attention rests on the hypothesis of a top-down control sending from cortical regions carrying higher-level functions to sensory regions. Evidence has been gathered through functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiments. The Frontal Eye Field (FEF) and IntraParietal Sulcus (IPS) are candidates proposed to form the frontoparietal attention network for top-down control. In this work we examined the influence patterns between...
Show moreContemporary understanding of human visual spatial attention rests on the hypothesis of a top-down control sending from cortical regions carrying higher-level functions to sensory regions. Evidence has been gathered through functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiments. The Frontal Eye Field (FEF) and IntraParietal Sulcus (IPS) are candidates proposed to form the frontoparietal attention network for top-down control. In this work we examined the influence patterns between frontoparietal network and Visual Occipital Cortex (VOC) using a statistical measure, Granger Causality (GC), with fMRI data acquired from subjects participated in a covert attention task. We found a directional asymmetry in GC between FEF/IPS and VOC, and further identified retinotopically specific control patterns in top-down GC. This work may lead to deeper understanding of goal-directed attention, as well as the application of GC to analyzing higher-level cognitive functions in healthy functioning human brain.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2011
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/FAU/3334101
- Subject Headings
- Attention, Physiological aspects, Cognitive neuroscience, Brain, Magnetic resonance imaging, Sensorimotor integration, Movement sequences, Human information processing, Cognitive psychology, Visual perception, Testing
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Hippocampal CA1 activation during object memory encoding in the novel object recognition task.
- Creator
- Cinalli, David A., Stackman, Robert W., Florida Atlantic University, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Department of Psychology
- Abstract/Description
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Transcription and translation of proteins are required for the consolidation of episodic memory. Arc, an effector immediate early gene, has been linked to synaptic plasticity following learning and memory. It is well established that the rodent hippocampus is essential for processing spatial memory, but its role in processing object memory is a point of contention. Using immunohistochemical techniques, hippocampal sections were stained for arc proteins in the CA1 region of the dorsal...
Show moreTranscription and translation of proteins are required for the consolidation of episodic memory. Arc, an effector immediate early gene, has been linked to synaptic plasticity following learning and memory. It is well established that the rodent hippocampus is essential for processing spatial memory, but its role in processing object memory is a point of contention. Using immunohistochemical techniques, hippocampal sections were stained for arc proteins in the CA1 region of the dorsal hippocampus in mice following two variations of the novel object recognition (NOR) task. Results suggest mice that acquired strong object memory showed significant hippocampal activation. In mice that acquired weak object memory, hippocampal activation was not significantly different from controls. Arc expression was also examined in other hippocampal sub-regions, as well as in the perirhinal cortex. These results suggest that the mice must acquire a threshold amount of object information before the hippocampal CA1 region is engaged.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2015
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004436, http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004436
- Subject Headings
- Association of ideas, Cellular control mechanisms, Cellular signal transduction, Episodic memory, Hippocampus (Brain) -- Physiology, Human information processing, Mice as laboratory animals
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Of Mice, Men and Memories: The Role of the Rodent Hippocampus in Object Recognition.
- Creator
- Cohen, Sarah J., Stackman, Robert W., Florida Atlantic University, Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences
- Abstract/Description
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Establishing appropriate animal models for the study of human memory is paramount to the development of memory disorder treatments. Damage to the hippocampus, a medial temporal lobe brain structure, has been implicated in the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. In humans, the role of the hippocampus is largely defined; yet, its role in rodents is much less clear due to conflicting findings. To investigate these discrepancies, an extensive review of the rodent...
Show moreEstablishing appropriate animal models for the study of human memory is paramount to the development of memory disorder treatments. Damage to the hippocampus, a medial temporal lobe brain structure, has been implicated in the memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. In humans, the role of the hippocampus is largely defined; yet, its role in rodents is much less clear due to conflicting findings. To investigate these discrepancies, an extensive review of the rodent literature was conducted, with a focus on studies that used the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) paradigm for testing. The total amount of time the objects were explored during training and the delay imposed between training and testing seemed to determine hippocampal recruitment in rodents. Male C57BL/6J mice were implanted with bilateral dorsal CA1 guide cannulae to allow for the inactivation of the hippocampus at discrete time points in the task. The results suggest that the rodent hippocampus is crucial to the encoding, consolidation and retrieval of object memory. Next, it was determined that there is a delay-dependent involvement of the hippocampus in object memory, implying that other structures may be supporting the memory prior to the recruitment of hippocampus. In addition, when the context memory and object memory could be further dissociated, by altering the task design, the results imply a necessary role for the hippocampus in the object memory, irrespective of context. Also, making the task more perceptually demanding, by requiring the mice to perform a two-dimensional to three-dimensional association between stimuli, engaged the hippocampus. Then, in the traditional NOR task, long and short training exploration times were imposed to determine brain region activity for weak and strong object memory. The inactivation and immunohistochemistry findings imply weak object memory is perirhinal cortex dependent, while strong object memory is hippocampal-dependent. Taken together, the findings suggest that mice, like humans, process object memory on a continuum from weak to strong, recruiting the hippocampus conditionally for strong familiarity. Confirming this functional similarity between the rodent and human object memory systems could be beneficial for future studies investigating memory disorders.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2016
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fau/fd/FA00004580
- Subject Headings
- Memory--Research., Mice as laboratory animals., Hippocampus (Brain)--Physiology., Episodic memory., Neurotransmitter receptors., Cellular control mechanisms., Cellular signal transduction., Human information processing.
- Format
- Document (PDF)
- Title
- Building a character: a somaesthetics approach to Comedias and women of the stage.
- Creator
- Cruz Peterson, Elizabeth Marie., Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, Department of Languages, Linguistics and Comparative Literature
- Abstract/Description
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This dissertation focuses on the elements of performance that contribute to the actress's development of somatic practices. By mastering the art of articulation and vocalization, by transforming their bodies and their environment, these actors created their own agency. The female actors lived the life of the characters they portrayed, which were full of multicultural models from various social and economic classes. Somaesthetics, as a focus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation and somatic...
Show moreThis dissertation focuses on the elements of performance that contribute to the actress's development of somatic practices. By mastering the art of articulation and vocalization, by transforming their bodies and their environment, these actors created their own agency. The female actors lived the life of the characters they portrayed, which were full of multicultural models from various social and economic classes. Somaesthetics, as a focus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation and somatic awareness, provides a pragmatic approach to understanding the unique way in which the woman of the early modern Spanish stage, while dedicating herself to the art of acting, challenged the negative cultural and social constructs imposed on her. Drawing from early modern plays and treatises on the precepts and practices of the acting process, I use somaesthetics to shed light on how the actor might have prepared for a role in a comedia, selfconsciously cultivating her body in order to meet the challenges of the stage.
Show less - Date Issued
- 2013
- PURL
- http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/3360968
- Subject Headings
- Women in the performing arts, Criticism and interpretation, Comic, The, Criticism and interpretation, European drama, Criticism and interpretation, Feminist drama, Criticism and interpretation, Spanish drama, Criticism and interpretation, Aesthetics, Physiological aspects, Body, Human (Philosophy), Mind and body
- Format
- Document (PDF)
