Publications by authors named "Dylan Vavra"

When a maternal rat nurtures her pups, she relies on adequate resources to provide optimal care for her offspring. Accordingly, limited environmental resources may result in atypical maternal care, disrupting various developmental outcomes. In the current study, maternal Long-Evans rats were randomly assigned to either a standard resource (SR) group, provided with four cups of bedding and two paper towels for nesting material or a limited resource (LR) group, provided with a quarter of the bedding and nesting material provided for the SR group.

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With increasing rates of anxiety and mood disorders across the world, there is an unprecedented need for preclinical animal models to generate translational results for humans experiencing disruptive emotional symptoms. Considering that life events resulting in a perception of loss are correlated with depressive symptoms, the enrichment-loss rodent model offers promise as a translational model for stress-initiated psychiatric disorders. Additionally, predisposed temperament characteristics such as coping styles have been found to influence an individual's stress response.

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Probiotics that regulate the microbiome-gut-brain axis and provide mental health benefits to the host are referred to as psychobiotics. Preclinical studies have demonstrated psychobiotic effects on early life stress-induced anxiety- and depression-related behavior in rodents; however, the specific mechanisms remain ill-defined. In the current study, we investigated the effects of probiotic supplementation on neurobiological responses to chronic stress in adult male Long-Evans rats.

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We investigated if growth mindsets-the belief in the malleable nature of human attributes-are negatively related to psychological distress and if they are positively related to treatment value and active coping. In the meta-analysis, we included articles published between 1988 and 2019, written in English, that reported on mindsets as well as a qualifying dependent variable and included information required to calculate an effect size. With a random effects approach, meta-analytic results (k = 72 samples, N = 17,692) demonstrated that mindsets relate, albeit with minimal effects, to distress, treatment and coping.

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Article Synopsis
  • Frank Beach warned researchers in his 1950 article about the risks of focusing too much on a single animal species, like laboratory rats, for studying limited behavioral aspects, such as learning.
  • Despite advancements in neuroscience techniques, behavioral studies still trail behind the development of neurobiological methods, leading to a gap in understanding animal behavior in natural settings.
  • By addressing these methodological concerns and diversifying research models, scientists can gain better insights into nervous systems and improve the relevance of studies to real-world applications.
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Memories of objects are biased toward what is typical of the category to which they belong. Prior research on memory for emotional facial expressions has demonstrated a bias towards an emotional expression prototype (e.g.

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