Publications by authors named "L J Halladay"

Widely used rodent anxiety assays like the elevated plus maze (EPM) and the open field test (OFT) are conflated with rodents' natural preference for dark over light environments or protected over open spaces. The EPM and OFT have been used for decades but are often criticized by behavioral scientists. Years ago, two revised anxiety assays were designed to improve upon the "classic" tests by excluding the possibility to avoid or escape aversion.

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The timing and specificity of oligodendrocyte myelination during development, as well as remyelination after injury or immune attack, remain poorly understood. Recent work has shown that oligodendrocyte progenitors receive synapses from neurons, providing a potential mechanism for neuronal-glial communication. In this study, we investigated the importance of these neuroglial connections in myelination during development and during neuronal plasticity in the mouse hippocampus.

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Widely used rodent anxiety assays like the elevated plus maze (EPM) and the open field test (OFT) are often conflated with rodents' natural preference for dark over light environments or protected over open spaces. The EPM and OFT have been used for many decades, yet have also been criticized by generations of behavioral scientists. Several years ago, two revised anxiety assays were designed to improve upon the "classic" tests by excluding the possibility to avoid or escape aversive areas of each maze.

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Behavioral neuroscience has long relied on in vivo electrophysiology to provide spatially and temporally precise answers to complex questions about the neural dynamics underlying sensory processing and action execution. Investigating the neural correlates of behavior can be challenging in freely behaving animals, especially when making inferences related to internal states that are temporally or conceptually ambiguous, such as decision-making or motivation. This necessitates careful creation of appropriate and rigorous controls and awareness of the many potential confounds when attributing neural signals to animal behavior.

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Nearly one percent of children in the US experience childhood neglect or abuse, which can incite lifelong emotional and behavioral disorders. Many studies investigating the neural underpinnings of maleffects inflicted by early life stress have largely focused on dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Newer veins of evidence suggest that exposure to early life stressors can interrupt neural development in extrahypothalamic areas as well, including the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST).

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