Tag: Carolyn Johnson
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Does puberty mark a transition in sensitive periods for plasticity in the associative neocortex?
Postnatal brain development is studded with sensitive periods during which experience dependent plasticity is enhanced. This enables rapid learning from environmental inputs and reorganization of cortical circuits that matches behavior with environmental contingencies. Significant headway has been achieved in characterizing and understanding sensitive period biology in primary sensory cortices, but relatively little is known about…
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Long-range orbitofrontal and amygdala axons show divergent patterns of maturation in the frontal cortex across adolescence
The adolescent transition from juvenile to adult is marked by anatomical and functional remodeling of brain networks. Currently, the cellular and synaptic level changes underlying the adolescent transition are only coarsely understood. Here, we use two-photon imaging to make time-lapse observations of long-range axons that innervate the frontal cortex in the living brain. We labeled…
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Rule learning enhances structural plasticity of long range axons in frontal cortex
Rules encompass cue-action-outcome associations used to guide decisions and strategies in a specific context. Subregions of the frontal cortex including the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) are implicated in rule learning, although changes in structural connectivity underlying rule learning are poorly understood. We imaged OFC axonal projections to dmPFC during training in…
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Carolyn Johnson is now Carolyn Johnson, Ph.D.!
Thanks to her committee Drs. Yi Zuo, Michael Stryker, Patricia Janak and Kevin Bender!
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Juvenile mice show greater flexibility in multiple choice reversal learning than adults
We hypothesized that decision-making strategies in juvenile animals, rather than being immature, are optimized to navigate the uncertainty and instability likely to be encountered in the environment at the time of the animal’s transition to independence. We tested juvenile and young adult mice on discrimination and reversal of a 4-choice and 2-choice odor-based foraging task.…