Teresa Barber, Ph.D. - US grants

9451098 Barber In order to enhance the teaching of behavioral neuroscience in our Psychology curriculum, we propose to acquire specific equipment items for introductory and methodology courses in Biological Psychology and for student research in this field. The formal courses bring students up to date on basic findings, theories, and techniques of Biological Psychology. Equipment requested for the Introductory course in the sequence (Psychology 125) will facilitate a weekly demonstration component that provides video, interactive computer, and hands-on experiences to enable students to visualize structure/function relationships and to "see" anatomical and physiological terminology in an active context. The Methodology course (Psychology 325) combines lectures and discussions with laboratory exercises. Students ultimately perform a guided experiment on brain/behavior relationships, using equipment provided by the grant. In this experiment, students examine (1) the normal physiological functioning of brain structures implicated in learning and memory and (2) the ways these structures may affect learning and memory. Students in the Methodology course also prepare a professional report of their experiment and participate in co-producing a Laboratory Manual in Biological Psychology, to be used by future student generations. Thus, they undertake a full range of scientist's activites, from the acquisition of factual information, through the generation of new data, to dissemination of information into the community of scientists.

It has been suggested through the use of lesion studies that a specific area of the chick forebrain (the IMHV) is involved in learning and memory. In the lesion technique a brain area is precisely removed (leaving other brain regions intact) and the resulting behavior examined. If an area of the brain is critical for a behavior, then removal of that structure will interfere with that behavior. Previous studies have shown that lesions of the chick forebrain (an area known as the IMHV) produce forgetting in passive avoidance learning, a task in which a chick pecks a bead coated with a bitter liquid. IMHV lesions also impair memory in sickness-conditioned learning (here the chick learns to avoid pecking beads associated with illness). These studies would suggest that the IMHV is important for all types of memory.
However, recent studies have demonstrated that IMHV lesions do not impair learning of a one-trial, water-bead task (here the chick pecks a bead coated with a positive reward). That is, lesions given before learning do not impair the ability of the chick to learn the task. Both the passive avoidance and the sickness-conditioned learning tasks are aversive and require pecking at beads. The water-bead task requires pecking at beads, but is not aversive (it is appetitive). It is possible that IMHV lesions only impair learning of aversive, pecking tasks.
To test this hypothesis, the project will examine the effects of lesions in non-pecking tasks that are either aversive or appetitive. Chicks can learn, in one trial, to associate a specific "place" with either sickness (sickness-conditioned place aversion) or heat reward (place preference learning). The experiments will examine the effects of IMHV lesions in both sickness-conditioned place aversion and place preference learning. Taken together with previous research, these experiments will determine the effects of IMHV lesions on pecking, non-pecking, aversive and appetitive types of learning.
The experiments will be carried out with several undergraduates each year from Dickinson College. This project provides the students with two major skills. The first is practical research, in which the students learn how to perform many of the techniques used in neuroscience research. The other, more important skill, is a change in the student's attitude from consumers to producers of knowledge. The results of the experiments will answer the questions that remain about the functional role of a specific brain area in learning and memory.

A grant has been awarded to Dickinson College under the direction of Dr.
John Henson to support the acquisition of a laser scanning confocal light
microscope. The ongoing renaissance in the use of light microscopy for
research and education in cell biology, neurobiology and developmental
biology has been fueled by the capabilities of confocal microscopy
systems. They have become the instrument of choice due to their ability
to "optically section" cells and tissues and therefore allow for the 3D
spatial resolution needed to define structural relationships, along with the
temporal resolution needed to follow dynamic processes. Dickinson
College, an undergraduate institution with an excellent record of
student/faculty research and an innovative science education program,
will use this confocal microscope to support student/faculty research,
undergraduate education, and community outreach.

The confocal microscopy system will be equipped with a microinjection
set up and will support a wide variety of student/faculty research projects.
The mechanism of cell motility and division will be addressed in
experiments using sea urchin adult cells and embryos. How the liver
transports toxic waste will be the focus of studies using cultures of skate
liver cells. The turning on and off of specific genes during embryonic
development will be worked on using fruit fly embryos. The neural control
of metamorphosis in molluscan embryos and the localization of memory
mechanisms in the brains of conditioned day old chicks will be subject of
other studies involving the use of this instrument. Undergraduate
research students will be integral participants in all of these projects,
contributing to experimental design, execution and analysis as well as the
presentation of results at meetings and the publication of the results in
scientific journals. In terms of impact on undergraduate education, the
instrument will be incorporated into the teaching of courses in cell biology,
developmental biology, neurobiology, molecular genetics and
biopsychology.

The presence of a confocal microscope at Dickinson will have a number
of significant and pervasive broader impacts. Importantly this instrument
will serve as one of the underpinnings for a new interdisciplinary major in
Neuroscience at Dickinson that will involve coursework selected from the
offerings of the Biology and Psychology programs. In terms of service to
underrepresented student groups, women undergraduate students
currently make up roughly 75% of the Biology, Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology and Psychology majors. We also envision making this instrument
available to faculty and students at Gettysburg and Franklin and Marshall
Colleges, the two other member colleges of the Central Pennsylvania
Consortium, as well as using both the Pennsylvania Academy of
Sciences and the American Society for Cell Biology meetings as fora for
discussing applications of confocal microscopy in a small college setting.
Furthermore, we plan to write up research-oriented teaching labs that
utilize the confocal for publication in the new on line journal Cell Biology
Education. In terms of community outreach, the confocal microscope will
be used in a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-funded program in which
local high school teachers attend summer workshops in cell and
molecular biology at Dickinson. The instrument will be used by teachers
during these workshops and made available for use by visiting high
school student groups during the academic year.

This "science posse" project is piloting and assessing a program designed to increase the total number of STEM majors from underrepresented groups. Building upon successful models already developed by The Posse Foundation and the Meyerhoff program at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, this program is enrolling 12 students per year in each of the first three years of the grant period. The posse program is recruiting students who display an interest in and aptitude for science from inner city high schools. Each science posse participant engages in a four-week pre-matriculation program introducing them to laboratory research and a series of enrichment workshops illustrating the connections between the sciences and mathematics. Each participant also receives an opportunity to take part in an eight-week summer collaborative student/faculty research experience at Dickinson after either their first or second year of study, as well as an additional eight-week summer capstone research experience at another academic or industrial research laboratory following their junior year. The goal of the program is to achieve an overall increase of at least 28 STEM graduates and to establish a cohort of science major role models for future students among underrepresented minority groups. Methods and results of the program's activities will be disseminated widely within the broader science education community through journal publications and presentations at professional meetings to serve as models for other institutions.