Publications by authors named "Victoria Vance"
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.
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- Parkinson's disease involves the death of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra, but the mechanisms behind this degeneration are still unclear.
- Researchers developed a chemogenetic mouse model to increase dopamine neuron activity, discovering that this led to changes in locomotor activity and early degeneration of specific neuron projections.
- This study suggests that excessive neural activity contributes to the vulnerability and eventual death of dopamine neurons, providing new insights into the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease.