Publications by authors named "R M Shansky"
Article Synopsis
- - Pavlovian fear conditioning research has primarily focused on male rodents and the freezing response, but new findings reveal that female rodents exhibit a different response called "darting," characterized by rapid escape movements.
- - Darting females (Darters) show less freezing than males and Non-darters, and they move faster when exposed to foot shocks, raising questions about the underlying mechanisms of these responses.
- - Further investigation showed that Darters are not more sensitive to aversive stimuli compared to Non-darters and males; instead, they might be less reactive in certain cases, highlighting the need to consider individual responses in fear conditioning studies.
Pavlovian fear conditioning is a widely used tool that models associative learning in rodents. For decades the field has used predominantly male rodents and focused on a sole conditioned fear response: freezing. However, recent work from our lab and others has identified darting as a female-biased conditioned response, characterized by an escape-like movement across a fear conditioning chamber.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe field of rodent behavioral neuroscience is undergoing two major sea changes: an ever-growing technological revolution, and worldwide calls to consider sex as a biological variable (SABV) in experimental design. Both have enormous potential to improve the precision and rigor with which the brain can be studied, but the convergence of these shifts in scientific practice has exposed critical limitations in classic and widely used behavioral paradigms. While our tools have advanced, our behavioral metrics - mostly developed in males and often allowing for only binary outcomes - have not.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSex differences in the rodent medial prefrontal cortex - What Do and Don't we know?
Neuropharmacology
May 2024
Article Synopsis
- The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is essential for functions like executive control and memory, but differences in its structure and function based on sex remain unclear due to a historical bias favoring male subjects in research.
- Recent studies emphasize the importance of including both male and female subjects to better understand mPFC neuroanatomy and behavior, challenging long-standing beliefs that are based primarily on male-centered research.
- The article argues for a more nuanced exploration of sex as a variable in neuroscience, warning against oversimplifying it to a binary model, and suggests that this could lead to significant insights into how the mPFC relates to behavior and health across sexes.