Binge drinking is associated with the genetic risk of developing alcohol use disorder (AUD) and is considered a strong predictor of AUD diagnosis. Excessive alcohol drin [...]

Neuroinflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction are early events in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and contribute to neurodegeneration and cognitive impairment. The CD74-MIF (m [...]

The medial olivocochlear (MOC) system aids in the prevention of age- and noise-induced hearing loss, and enhances the detection of salient sound in diverse sensory enviro [...]

Adolescent social isolation is a developmental stressor that increases vulnerability to neuropsychiatric disorders including substance use disorder and eating disorders. [...]

Cannabis is the most frequently used federally illicit substance in pregnancy. The available human literature suggests that infants exposed to cannabis in pregnancy displ [...]

The descending pain modulatory pathway exerts bidirectional control of ongoing nociceptive inputs traveling from the body to the brain. Despite a large body of work impli [...]

This dissertation examines how aging affects economic decision‑making and its neural bases. Compared with younger adults (21–45), older adults (65–85) reported less impul [...]

Throughout the central nervous system (CNS), a family of ligand-gated ion channels known as α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptors (AMPARs) transl [...]

This dissertation characterizes the effects of endogenous opioid peptide enkephalin on excitability in the hippocampus. It also investigates the regulation of enkephalin [...]