Jordan Yorgason

We had four main objectives when I applied for the mentoring grant: to measure locomotor habituation to an environment, acoustic prepulse/startle inhibition, memory with a morris land maze, and to present findings in a neuroscience journal and on a poster for a convention. The results are as follows:

Locomotor Habituation

I created software to measure the amount of movement of the control and Ultrasound treated rats. This software measured their movement over time. I performed the analysis on the data, using Igor statistical analysis software. The results from the data were not significant.

Acoutstic Prepulse/Startle Inhibition

I created software that measured the behavioral response to a startle tone coupled with a prepulse -startle inhibiting- tone. The rats were placed in the chamber for 20 to 30 minutes and a randomized startle event was administered. I then took that data and performed statistical analysis using Igor software. Rats that had received postnatal ultrasound showed a significant decrease in amplitude of startle. Since there are many possible-contributing factors for this defect, we also performed hearing tests on the rats that showed a response. The results from the hearing tests have been analyzed and the results are significant.

Morris Land/Water Maze

We created a land maze to test the rat’s memory of orientation. The maze was a table filled with trays. One of the trays had a food pellet in it. The rat would use visual cues to remember which tray had the food pellet. The rat would be placed at different spots on the table, and its trajectory was recorded as it looked for the pellet. I did not write program to record its trajectory, as the algorithm for locating the rat using images was too complex (bordering that of programming artificial intelligence).

Additional Experiments

I also created some software using the startle/prepulse paradigm to test the rat’s memory. Tones were placed a certain intervals that would elicit memory responses. While running the paradigm we recorded EEG.

Presenting Data

We will be presenting our findings at the Society for Neuroscience convention in Atlanta, GA. I will be one of the presenters for the poster. The findings will also be presented in a scientific journal.