Publications by authors named "Sloane Paulcan"
Temporal order processing in rats depends on the training protocol.
J Exp Psychol Anim Learn Cogn
January 2023
The perception of temporal order can help infer the causal structure of the world. By investigating the perceptual signatures of audiovisual temporal order in rats, we demonstrate the importance of the protocol design for reliable order processing. Rats trained with both reinforced audiovisual trials and non-reinforced unisensory trials (two consecutive tones or flashes) learned the task surprisingly faster than rats trained with reinforced multisensory trials only.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEndolysosomal TPCs regulate social behavior by controlling oxytocin secretion.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
February 2023
Article Synopsis
- Oxytocin (OT) is a hormone that plays a key role in how mammals behave socially, and it is stored in special structures in the brain called LDCVs.
- Researchers found that tiny channels in lysosomes (called TPCs) are important for releasing oxytocin by helping prepare these storage units, even if they don't directly release it right away.
- Mice that couldn’t use TPCs showed less oxytocin and struggled with social behaviors, but giving them oxytocin helped them act normally again.
In obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), functional behaviors such as checking that a door is locked become dysfunctional, maladaptive, and debilitating. However, it is currently unknown how aversive and appetitive motivations interact to produce functional and dysfunctional behavior in OCD. Here we show a double dissociation in the effects of anxiogenic cues and sensitivity to rewarding stimuli on the propensity to develop functional and dysfunctional checking behavior in a rodent analog of OCD, the observing response task (ORT).
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