Essel Program - 2002 Annual Report
The Neuroscience Program: Sixteen seniors matriculated in the senior seminar to complete the Neuroscience concentration. Enrollment in Introduction to Neuroscience was 51. Additionally, undergraduate research opportunities continued to thrive. Three senior class Essel fellows completed honors theses in Neuroscience, and one other Essel fellow completed a molecular biology thesis this year. The accomplishments of our students and faculty in this 10th year of the Essel Neuroscience program are described below. I. Undergraduate Research Fellows: Thirteen undergraduate students were able to pursue Neuroscience research at Williams during the summer of 2001. They were able to engage in hands-on research for 10 weeks while working closely with a Neuroscience professor. The summer research projects and continued interests and accomplishments of these students are listed in Appendix I. Titles and abstracts of Essel supported theses by these students can be found in Appendix II. II.
Williams Faculty: III. Neuroscience Courses: The faculty continues to provide a wide range of courses that covered a variety of disciplines within the field of Neuroscience and which offer students an outstanding opportunity to develop ideas and conduct empirical research. Appendix VIII provides a listing of the Neuroscience courses, the syllabi of new Neuroscience courses and a brief description of the student-generated research that occurred in each. IV. Research Technicians:
Dr. Noah Sandstrom, who received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Duke University
in May of 1999, continued his duties as part- time Senior Neuroscience
Technician for his 3rd year. He simultaneously continued lecturing for
the Psychology department and has been offered, and accepted, a position
as an assistant professor of Psychology at Williams. Although he will
no longer be an Essel fellow, he will fortunately be able to continue
his valued research and teaching for the Neuroscience Program for many
years to come. V. Colloquium Speakers: The Neuroscience faculty was successful in bringing significantly more interesting Essel funded speakers on campus this year. A complete listing of these speakers and their topics can be found in Appendix VI. VI. Williams College Program for Undergraduates at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Student Participants: David
Arnolds '04 Dr. Steve Zottoli continued to direct the Williams College Program for undergraduate studies at Woods Hole. Additional funding for the program was provided by Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Nan and Howard Schow. APPENDIX I: 2001 ESSEL NEUROSCIENCE FELLOWS
Student: Walter Chen ('01)
Student: Abigail Davidson ('03)
Student: Sarah Hart ('02)
Student: Nicholas Hiza ('02) Student:
Annie Im ('01)
Student: Brian Kelly ('02)
Student: James Nick Lafave ('02)
Student: Natalie Marchant ('01) Student:
Jennifer Nierman ('02) Student:
Abigail Rosenthal ('02) Student:
Melody Samuels ('02) Student:
Caitlin Stashwick ('02) Student:
Yang Wang ('01) APPENDIX II: ABSTRACTS OF NEUROSCIENCE HONORS THESIS Electrotonic Coupling of Supramedullary Neurons in Tautogolabrus adspersus Nicholas Hiza Supramedullary neurons (SMNs) are a group of neurons found in the central nervous system of many species of teleost fish. Electrophysiological exploration of the supramedullary neurons in the cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus) suggests the cells are electrotonically coupled through gap junctions. To test this theory, a cell soma was injected with a fluorescent dye, Lucifer Yellow (521.56 MW), and neighboring somata were screened for dye coupling. Dye was observed in neighboring cells in 6 of 28 preparations. This strongly supports the hypothesis that the SMNs in this species are interconnected through gap junctions. The morphological arrangement and projection patterns of the SMNs indicate that these interconnections exist in the median dorsal fissure, possibly on neurites found projecting rostrally and caudally off the soma. Multiple fine processes were found branching off the main process of the cell. These processes have not been observed previously. Their targets are unknown, and they indicate this system may be more complex then initial expected. Finally, asymmetry in dye flow and patterns in the number of cells filled indicates that cells may exist in strongly coupled subgroups of between three and four cells. These subgroups are separated from one another by wider intersomatic intervals, and may serve as a bridge-point for information crossing the midline.
Sarah Hart Adverse early experiences have long-term effects on brain morphology and function, stress responsivity, and behavior. In rats, maternal separation during early postnatal life affects both brain and behavior, though results vary with the use of different experimental paradigms. Maternal separation causes a decrease in negative feedback signals of the HPA axis, leading to higher basal corticosterone levels and increased sensitivity to stressful stimuli in adult life. The adult hippocampus is particularly vulnerable to chronically elevated corticosterone levels, exhibiting both morphological and functional changes. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of maternal separation on performance on a hippocampally dependent task, the 12-arm radial arm maze (RAM). Rats were removed from their home cage for six hours daily during e third postnatal week. As adults, these maternally separated (MS) animals demonstrated long-term impairment in both working and reference spatial memory on the RAM compared to non-maternally separated controls (NMS). Additionally, after 24 days of either daily restraint or control conditions, MS rats showed poor retention of the maze task compared to NMS rats. However, restraint itself was not associated with changes in performance. Furthermore, MS and NMS rats performed at comparable levels by the end of testing. These results support the growing body of research describing the detrimental effects of adverse early experiences on cognitive function in adulthood, especially on tasks mediated by the hippocampus. The Role of the Mauthner Cell Homologs in C-Start Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury Jennifer Nierman
The Mauthner cells (M-cells), a pair of large, identifiable neurons in
the goldfishhindbrain, are known to be involved in the initiation of the
fast startle response (C-start). Two additional pairs of neurons in the
hindbrain, MiD2cm and MiD3cm, are also thought to be involved in the generation
of C-starts. Due to their morphological and probable functional homology
to the M-cell, I refer to these cells as the M-cell homologs.
APPENDIX III: ESSEL SUPPORTED PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
Invited
Talks "Hormones and the Brain: Influences on Learning and Memory" Department of Psychology, DePauw University, Greencastle, In. Posters
*Kelly,
B.A., *Hart, S.R., & Sandstrom, N.J. (2001). Estrogenic modulation
of time Sandstrom,
N.J. (2001). Isolation of rats during the third postnatal week leads to
memory Paul Solomon Publications Steinmetz, J.E., Gluck, M.A., & Solomon, P.R (Eds.) (2001). Model Systems in Neurobiology of Associative Learning: A Festschrift in Honor of Richard F.Thompson. New Jersey; Lawrence E. Erlbaum Associates. Invited
Talks "Future and Current Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease." Grand Rounds for the Department of Psychiatry, Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, Bennington, VT. "Recruitment for Clinical Trials in Alzheimer's Disease: the 7 Minute Screen." Presentation at Fujisawa Research Institute of America, Investigators Meeting, Chicago, IL. "Single-Blind comparison of Galantamine and Donepezil: Attntion, Concentration and Electrocortical activity. Presentation for the Janssen Nicotine Advisory Board, Salt Lake City, UT. "Recent Developments in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease." Grand Rounds at Albany Medical College, Albany, NY.
Publications Invited
Talks
Invited
Talks "Neurosteroids and the Maternal Separation Paradigm. (November, 2001) Invited colloquium in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA. "Using a model of early neonatal stress to elucidate patterns of altered brain development". (April, 2002) Department of Experimental Biology, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy. "Pandering or Pedagogy: Using multimedia to teach Neuroscience". Workshop presented at the New England Undergraduate Research on Neuroscience (N.E.U.R.O.N.) conference, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA. Posters APPENDIX IV: NEUROSCIENCE FACULTY ACCOMPLISHMENTS Professor Elizabeth Adler This year, Elizabeth Adler continued her research on PC12 cells with the assistance of two students, Yang Wang, '01, and Caitlin Stashwick '02. Last summer, Yang focused on how Acetylcholinesterase is regulated by neuronal activity and movements of calcium in the cell. Caitlin continued Yang's research in the fall and they co-authored a poster that was presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego last fall. Professor Adler left Williams at the conclusion of this year for a position at Science On-Line. Professor
Heather Williams Betty Zimmerberg Dr.
Zimmerberg spent the first semester of this year working at the internationally
acclaimed center for Neuroscience at the University of Cagliari in Cagliari,
Italy on sabbatical leave. There, she examined how maternal separation
affects the protein subunits of the GABA receptor in the neurosteroid
allopregnanolone. This research will hopefully allow us to better understand
the neural mechanisms underlying behavioral responses to fearful situations
and how childhood trauma could affect coping behavior. This line of research
is being supported by a National Science Foundation Grant entitled "Early
Experience and Neurosteroid Response to Stress." Three students worked
in her lab during the summer of 2001, Abigail Davidson '03, Melody Samuels
'02, and Abigail Rosenthal '02, collaborating on this important research.
Dr.
Z., as he is known by his students, taught a Biology senior seminar on
Plasticity in the Nervous system in the Fall and Animal Physiology in
the spring. Two students worked on honors theses in his lab, Jennifer
Neirman '02 and Nick Hiza '02, both of which were participants in the
Woods Hole summer research laboratory program. He has also served as Director
of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant to Williams, the chair of
he Institutional Animal Care and Use committee and was the chair of the
Neuroscience Program in the fall of 2001. He continued serving as the
President of the Grass Foundation, a small not-for-profit foundation chartered
to support research and education in Neuroscience. He is also an external
advisory board member for the Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network
(BRIN) program of New Mexico. APPENDIX V: OUTSIDE SOURCES OF FUNDING Paul Solomon 12/00-12/02- Phase II, 12 Week, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Multicenter Study Evaluating the Safety and Efficacy of Three Fixed Doses of Oral CP-457, 920 (30MG QD, 60 MG BID and 120 MD BID) and donpezil in Outpatients with AD. Pfizer Global Research. 4/01-4/02- A Well-Controlled Safety and Efficacy Study of FK-960 in Subjects with Mild to Moderate AD. Fujisawa Research Institute of America, inc. 4/01-4/02- A Placebo-Controlled Dose Titration Efficacy and Tolerability Study of Neotrofin in Patient with Probable AD. NeoTherapeutics Inc. 4/01- 12/02- A Randomized Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Safety and Efficacy of Divalproex Sodium Therapy for Agitation in Nursing Home Residents with Probable or Possible AD. Betty Zimmerberg 9/15/00- 8/31/02. Early Experience and Neurosteroid Response to Stress: A Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory Enhancement Project. Research grant from the National Science Foundation. $74,906 1/97-5/31/01. Multimedia Neuroscience Education. Development of Undergraduate Education grant from the National Science Foundation. $228,9876 APPENDIX VI: ESSEL-SPONSERED COLLOQUIUM SPEAKERS October
19th, 2001 November
16th, 2001 March
7th, 2002 April
10th, 2002 May
1st, 2002 APPENDIX VIII: UPPER LEVEL NEUROSCIENCE CLASSES AND EMPIRICAL PROJECTS PSYC 315 - Hormones & Behavior- Noah Sandstrom The primary goal of this class is to understand they mechanisms by which hormones act on behavior and what the different physiological and behavioral effects various hormones produce, in addition to seeing how our behavior can influence how the body regulates hormone production and secretion. Specific topics that are examined include: sexual differentiation; courtship, reproduction and parental behavior; aggression; and learning and memory. Students are required to design and execute an empirical project as a part of this course. Some projects done by students included a study of hormonal influences on partner preferences, hormonal modulation of spatial learning and memory, the effects of stress hormones on feeding behavior and motivation for food, and acute effects of arousal on androgen levels in humans. In addition, students attended the annual symposium of the Center for Neuroendocrine Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This was the third year the class attended this symposium and, as usual, it was an excellent experience. The speakers were exceptional and the students became actively engaged in discussing posters with presenters.
This tutorial focused enabled students to learn techniques for diagnosing and treating neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkison's and Huntington's diseases. The course sought to provide an in-depth analysis of the relationship between brain dysfunction and disease state, providing students with the opportunity to see how recent advances in Neuroscience have had a profound impact on the understanding of diseases that affect cognition, behavior, and emotion. Diagnosis, treatment strategies, as well as social and ethical issues of each disease were considered. The course is taught in the tutorial format and provides students with the opportunity to present material based upon: (1) review of published literature, (2) analysis of case histories, and (3) observations of diagnosis and treatment of patients both live and on videotape. At the conclusion of the course, students were given actual case folders of patients from the Memory Clinic in Bennington and asked to make a diagnosis and devise a treatment plan for each case based on all they had learned.
Neuroscientists explore issues inherent in the study of brain and behavior. The overall objective of this seminar is to create a culminating senior experience in which previous course work in specific areas in the Neuroscience Program can be brought to bear in a synthetic, interdisciplinary approach to understanding complex problems. The specific goals for students in this seminar are (1) to evaluate original research and critically examine the experimental evidence for theoretical issues, and (2) to gain an understanding of this discipline through group work, and oral presentations. The course emphasized an integrative approach, asking students to consider topics from a range of perspectives including molecular, cellular, systems, behavioral and clinical neuroscience. Previous topics have included memory, autism, depression, alcoholism, language development, and stress. This year, the course was set up so that each student was assigned to lead a discussion for one of four levels, clinical, systems, cellular or molecular, of each topic (both leaders and topics varied weekly). This included finding appropriate, recent articles of interest in that topic and presenting them to the rest of the group also assigned to that level for that topic. Then, an individual from each of the four levels met in one interdisciplinary group ( clinical, system, cellular and molecular student) to discuss the relationship and the 'bigger picture' of the topic. Ultimately, each interdisciplinary group devised and proposed an empirical study for the topic based on what they had discussed. The final project for the class was a grant proposal. This required each student to devise an original empirical idea and write a grant proposal conforming to National Institute of Health grant guidelines.
The first part of this course focused on how descriptive studies provide the basis for formulating questions about behavior as well as the statistical methods used to evaluate the answers to these questions. Then students were asked to consider the behavior of individuals, both as it is mediated by biological mechanisms and as it appears from an evolutionary perspective. The second half of the course was primarily concerned with the behaviors of groups of animals from a wide variety of vertebrate and invertebrate species. Stimuli, responses, and internal mechanisms that maintain social systems as well as the selection pressures that drive animals toward a particular social system were the primary focus throughout. The lab portion of the class included field research such as observing, squirrels and red winged blackbirds around campus, a trip to the Millbrooke (NY) zoo, and a final empirical lab. For this portion, students were asked to further develop one of the previous labs and do a full lab write-up of the results.
The ability to respond to environmental stimuli and to adapt to change is fundamental to all aspects of higher cognitive function. Processes as diverse as learning and memory, the development of alternative neuronal pathways during recovery from trauma, the acquisition of pharmacological tolerance and the recognition of olfactory cues in maternal/newborn bonding all depend upon such neuronal plasticity. This course considered a variety of short-term and long-term plastic phenomena in the nervous system, focusing on the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms. Specific topics included plasticity of synaptic function (e.g., LTP in the hippocampus and its possible relevance to memory, cellular correlates of habituation and sensitization in Aplysia), plasticity during development (neurite outgrowth, plasticity of neuronal phenotype, the acquisition of excitability) and plasticity under various pathological conditions (kindling and epilepsy, drug addiction, response to injury). Though there was no empirical project, the small size of the class (approximately 6) and the difficulty of the papers enabled students to become extremely immersed in the topics.
This course examined the molecular and cellular bases of the transduction and encoding of physical phenomena such as light, sound, and chemicals in a variety of organisms, including plants and invertebrates. Such questions as "What properties of the physical world are sensed (and which ones are ignored)?", "What mechanisms are used to convert physical or chemical energy into a changed biological state within a cell?", "What are the consequences of this changed state?", "How are differences in the attributes of one modality in the physical world represented by differences in molecular and cellular processes?" were considered. Some examples that were coverened included; a comparison of visual structures and pigments in bacteria, plants, arthropods, molluscs, and primates; sound transduction and its musical consequences; and the olfactory system of mammals-which is able to produce a large variety of receptors specific to an individual's experience. For a more comprehensive description of this new class, the syllubus is attached. Biology 303 - Sensory Biology - Fall 2001 Lectures:
Bronfman 107 Instructor: H. Williams Course Schedule: Topics and Readings Topics Readings Dates I. Introduction: principles, psychophysics, and coding Kandel ch. 21 Sept 7 II. Mechanoreception Sept 11-20
Bacterial membrane receptors Smith ch. 5 III. Hearing Sept 25-Oct 9
Insect hearing: a special case of touch? Eberl et al.
Taste receptors and processing Smith ch. 12; Kandel ch. 32 pp. 636-642;
Adler et al., Chandrashekar et al. V. Sensing light Smith pp. 195-202 Nov 1-20
Rhodopsin Rodieck, pp. 188-193; Kandel ch. 26, pp. 507-517 VI. Special senses and other systems (student presentations) Nov 29-Dec 6
some possible topics are: Reading
list Kandel,
E.R., Schwartz, J.H., Jessell, T.M. (2000) Principles of Neural Science,
4th Edition. McGraw-Hill. Papers from the literature: Adler,
E., Hoon, M.A., Mueller, K.L., Chandrashekar, J., Ryba, N.J.P., and Zuker,
C.S. (2000) A novel family of mammalian taste receptors. Cell, 100:693-702. Important dates Oct
1 Monday Mechanosensation problem(s) due The Sensory Biology course will include 5-6 weeks of laboratory exercises and activities, scheduled as follows: Dates Location Topic
Sept. 26-27 TBL 104 Psychophysics Two of the labs (psychophysics and sensory illusions) will investigate sensory phenomena by examining human responses to a variety of stimuli; the other three will use crayfish as the experimental system. The crayfish system is a well-established invertebrate model for many aspects of sensation and neurobiology. Psychophysics Stretch
Receptor Retinal
Potentials Crayfish
Visual Pigments Sensory
Illusions Evaluation
Problem sets: 60 % (15% for each of four problem sets, one following each
major topic) Class Participation Quality and quantity (but not straight quantity) of class participation will be the determining factor in assigning a grade that falls between two categories. If your final grade lies on the line between a B+ and an A-, and you have been an active and positive contributor to class discussion, you will find yourself with an A-. Otherwise, it will be a B+. Problem sets At the conclusion of each of the four major topics, you will be given a problem set calling for short essay answers over a weekend. As noted above, these problem sets are open book/open notes, but cannot be discussed with others. I will be expected clearly written, cohesive answers. Although problems may include information we have not covered in class or in readings, all of the information needed to answer the problems will be present in materials from the class. The answer to any single problem should not exceed one page; depending upon the topic, there may be up to 5 problems (larger numbers of problems will mean that shorter answers are expected). Paper and Presentation A short paper and presentation on a topic of your choice, consisting of a synthesis of material from the original literature, will make up 25% of the final grade. An outline of the paper, along with a preliminary reference list, is due on Friday Nov. 1. I will go over this outline and return it to you, with suggestions, soon thereafter. You will then research the topic of your choice, give a presentation to the class during the final two weeks of class, and hand in a 5-7 page paper on the last day of reading period (the class has no final exam). What is the audience for this paper/presentation? The readers for whom you should write are your classmates. To be sure, the instructor will read the final version and others may read a draft, but the paper should be written for a fellow student. Assume that the reader has acquired knowledge about the material we’ve covered in class. Choosing a topic The
choice of a topic is up to you; for suggestions, ideas, or a place to
start: Your paper and presentation should reflect critical evaluation of your topic, which should be reasonably restricted, should not regurgitate the pre-digested views found in books (which are good for laying the groundwork and making sure you understand the background), and should be use a synthetic approach or lay out a theoretical framework about the topic you choose. Although you may skim a number papers in the original literature in finding your topic and focusing in upon it, a good paper need cite no more than 7 or so journal articles central to its topic. if you find yourself needing many more, you have not focused your topic properly. IMPORTANT: The papers you cite in your list of references should be from refereed scientific journals, and not from the internet. One reason that it is to your advantage to start work on your paper/presentation early is that you can request journal articles that we don't have via inter-library loan. This is most easily done on-line, using “forms” option on the library’s web page (http://www.williams.edu/library/forms/illphoto.html). The presentation You will present your topic to the class during the last two weeks of the course (the precise schedule will be determined later). The presentation should last about 15-20 minutes, and you should plan to present the class with a handout that gives the outline of your topic and any important figures that it would be hard to reproduce in notes, as well as some selected references. You should plan to do some board work and also present some important figures (you can reproduce them from journal articles or books if you let us know who originally produced them) as overheads (unfortunately, we do not have an AV classroom). Your presentation should be planned to get across some serious content in a manner that engages your listeners - ideally, they should have questions! The
paper Write clearly and concisely, do not use the passive voice or first person unless absolutely necessary. Avoid using words suggested by the thesaurus unless you are absolutely sure you understand how they change the nuances of what you're saying. Research prospectus There will be no formal lab reports for this course. Instead, you will be expected to generate a prospectus for a research project that builds upon one of the issues we cover in lab. You will be expected to provide 1) a short introduction, including a statement about the background and importance of the experiment(s) you propose, 2) the specific aims of the experiment(s), 3) an overview of the methods you would use, 4) the possible outcomes of the experiment(s) and their interpretation, and 5) references. This research prospectus should not exceed 5 pages and is due before you leave for Thanksgiving. Honor Code The honor code as laid out in the Student Handbook applies to all written work in this course. For specific types of assignments, further guidelines are as follows: Problems: Open-book, open-notes - but do not consult any individuals or discuss the problems with others. Paper/presentation: You are welcome and encouraged to solicit feedback from others during the writing of the paper. However, the words that go on the pages and into the presentation must be your own, and not derived from written materials or from other individuals. All materials should be properly referenced (if you have doubts about how to do so, see the instructor). Research
prospectus: You are encouraged to consult with others in devising the
research problem and approach you will present. However, the work you
hand in must be your own.
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