Correlation Between High Fat And Sugar Diets And Its Effects On Spatial Geometry

Group D had begun the experiment with similar results as Group N––with many mistakes––but after the initial 10 days of no reward followed by food rewards, Group D ended the experiment with very little mistakes, like Group C. This experiment proved that the rats really did know where they were at within the maze––especially Group D––and that within the first 10 days they had spent in the maze they were actually building a mental representation of the maze, or a cognitive map. In the "spatial orientation experiment" (Hock 113), the results concluded that the highest number of rats selected path 6 as their route; path 6 was the route that led almost directly to the location of the food reward, and this supported the idea that the rats had not only built a cognitive map of the maze, but could comprehend in which general direction the location of the food reward was in relation to the rats' starting point. Why is this study significant to the field of

The subjects were either given a placebo or a moderate dose of caffeine; three different memory tasks were then conducted. Though the results showed no evidence that caffeine had an effect on memory, it showed that performance levels were better when subjects had been exposed to caffeine (Kelemen & Creeley, 2001). With the information for previous experiments, the basis of this experiment was formatted. The current study, like the previous, also looks at the effect that exposure to caffeine can have on the test subject’s performance. The whole experiment is divided into two parts, experiment 1 and experiment 2. The first portion of the experiment looks at the difference between training planaria to turn around in two different conditions. The planaria were either trained to approach the light or avoid the light by using the positive punishment of blowing puffs of air at the heads of the planaria until they turned around. The second portion of the experiment used the same training conditions as the first portion but looked at the effect the exposure to caffeine had on the planaria, specifically, the number of trials that were conducted to get the planaria to turn around on their own. The experiment was then conducted after forming two hypotheses, one for experiment 1 and one for experiment 2, to use as a guideline. Based on the current knowledge about planaria and their natural habitat, it can be hypothesized for experiment 1 that it will require fewer trials for

The introduction starts out discussing childhood obesity and impacts child obesity can cause. The rest of the paper was standard and contained results and testings done. Interesting aspect of this article was the results showed correlation between white matter volume and BMI. It was also suggested that the white matter alterations probably result from several pathophysiological processes related to elevated adiposity (fat). It was found higher the BMI was associated with a reduced left hippocampal volume. This section of the brain deals with learning and memory. Not only does it deal with memory and learning, but translates neurohormonal signals of energy balance into adaptive behavioral outcomes thought to be involved in further executive functions that inhibit food intake. It also was found obesity to be related to atrophy and dysfunction of the hippocampus and that hippocampal lesions may lead to increased appetite and weight

The Western Diet mainly consists of fried foods, refined grains, sugar, high carbohydrate and fats, and meats (3). It has been hypothesized that having a Western Diet increases one’s chances for developing depression. There has been a great deal of research into why the western diet increase’s one chance of having depression. A common sense reason maybe that the Western Diet consisted of large amounts carbohydrates, fats and sugars which promotes obesity and then causes depression (1). More scientific evidence suggest that having a improper diet like the Western Diet negatively affects peripheral and central dopamine, which are neurotransmitters (chemical which transmit signals across the synapse from the nerve cell to the target cell)

The hippocampus, in the limbic system of the brain, controls long-term memory and emotions. With the high sugar diets, inflammation markers within the hippocampus increased, but the immunomodulatory gene expression decreased. The inflammation markers directly correlate with the decrease in memory on these high sugar diets. Memory deficiency happened within short term exposures of sugar to the diet. Rats tested showed lower exploration ratios than control rats. These animals fed "sugar for less than 2 weeks (showed) impaired hippocampal-dependent place recognition memory compared to control and PUFA fed rats." (Beilharz, Kaakoush, Maniam, and Morris, 2016, p. 309). Place recognition tests confirmed the effects on memory with the sugar fed group being considerably lower in their scores. Sugar was the factor that proved to be "crucial for the memory deficits." (Beilharz et al., 2016, p. 309). The gut microbiome also has significant effects on emotions. Depression and anxiety, including anhedonic-like behaviors were found in direct relation to the sugar intake.

Explain the experimental setup for the conditioned place avoidance paradigm and what this experiment adds to the validity of the overall results.

Fat was viewed as the original epitome of evil when it came to health issues. However, as of recently, the tides may have changed and redirected towards sugar. The American diet has been reducing fat but sugar-related issues like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease has continued to plague Americans. Some scientists put the blame on sugar and the increasing sugar content in all the foods that are being consumed. Still, it is hard to prove this and studies are tackling the issue. However, studies and journals are being published to analyze the difference in health when we replace sugar with starch and the possible patterns that will be revealed.

These data suggest that excessive dietary lipids alter the oral perception of nutrients and body weight modifies a palatability of diet.

Now, in 2015, the number of searches and available information increased from ~334,000 hits to ~32, 200, 00 hits. The idea that food has similar addictive characteristics as drugs that affect the brain is quite controversial. People tend to eat when they are depressed, happy, emotional, celebrating and many other situations because food is easily accessed and not illegal. Research regarding sugar having addictive qualities was conducted in 2010 by the University of Texas and the Oregon Research Institute. Equipped with Haagen-Dazs ice cream and a group of overweight women, the researchers measured the brains reward center activity when shown images of ice cream and when tasting an ice cream milk shake; six months down the road, the group reconvened and the women once again tasted the ice cream. The results were that the woman who had gained weight over the time gap had decreased activity in the striatum, an area of the brain that registers reward, thus needing more to reach a feel good level of satisfaction (Langreth & Stanford, 2011). "The significance of this finding is that these are the same regions of the brain that light up in drug addicts who are show images of drug paraphernalia or drugs" (Wormer & Davis, 2013).

However, rats injected with scopolamine and had direct placement performed more poorly than those without scopolamine, which continues to prove scopolamine’s block in spatial learning and memory (Malin et al., 2015). Other studies also prove that indeed learning navigation tasks are impaired by cholinergic blockades (Sutherland, Whishaw, and Regher, 1982). On the other hand, rats will develop a non-mapping strategy to locate the platform, which is similar to moving the hidden platform in a water maze (Buresova, Bolhuis, and Bures,

Summary: This study compared twins that were restrained and unrestrained eaters. The scale in the study characterized restrained eaters as displaying cognitive control over eating habits, comorbid with personal weight concerns. All twins participated together and were told that the study was focusing on taste perception. Participants were given breakfast followed by fMRI exams. A statistician was present to reduce any bias in the order of sessions between restrained and unrestrained eaters. Following, twins were given a preview of how the experiment would work, and samples of how fast pictures of food would appear and disappear in a slideshow. Participants had to assign each picture of food with its own distinct category of fattening (high caloric foods) or non-fattening (low caloric foods). Directly after the scans the pairs of twins were given a 10.9 ounce milkshake and had consume the contents in 10 minutes. After it was finished twins were asked to record the flavor of milkshake before another fMRI session was administered. The experiment was conducted by showing 13 distinct sets of photographs, 10

In order to provide objective measures of some characteristics of the experimental room, 61 objects in the room were rated on two dimensions: saliency and schema expectancy. The saliency rating was designed to indicate how noticeable an object was in the context of the room. Objects such as the skull and the Skinner box were high on this scale, while objects such as staples and an eraser were low. The schema-expectancy rating was intended to provide an index of subjects’ graduate-student office schema by asking how likely the object was in the context of the room. Objects such as the desk and ceiling lights were high on this scale, while objects such as a model brain and a piece of bark were

This study investigated the effects of displaced objects and spatial reorganization on habituation of exploratory behavior. The subjects, rats, each individually spent 5 minutes in an open field for 6 trials. Throughout the study, exploratory behavior was measured in the number of contacts the subject made, the number of ambulations, and contact time (seconds). Trials 1-5 were mainly used to familiarize the subject with its surroundings, naturally leading to decreasing amounts of exploratory behavior. Trial 6 involves the same routine, except displaced objects are introduced in an attempt to renew exploratory behavior and promote the building up of environmental maps and representations. Additionally, the measured behavior

Spatial Cognition is concerned with the achievement, organization, application, and modification of knowledge about spatial surroundings (Bandura., 1963). These capabilities enable animals and humans to manage basic and high-level cognitive tasks in everyday life (Bandura.,1971). Spatial cognition studies have assisted to tie cognitive psychology and neuroscience together. Most researchers are concerned about how animals acquire and find information. Since acquiring and acting on spatial information appears to have computational requirements from learning to predict temporal sequences of events, we might expect to find adaptively specialized, domain-specific mechanisms of spatial learning and/or

The ability to learn routes and/or maps are necessary to navigate around the environment successfully. Tolman (1984) challenged the notion of stimulus-response (S-R) learning that attempts to explain route learning and navigation. He provided support for the development of cognitive maps in rats. A cognitive map is a mental model of space used for route learning and navigation. Tolman (1984) demonstrated that rats learn routes and navigate successfully without reinforcement; thus, weakening the notion of S-R learning. Also, he demonstrated that rats can develop a wide and comprehensive cognitive map. However, the environment is constantly changing. Therefore, individuals must be able to detect environmental changes and respond appropriately by updating their mental model. The efficiency of updating a mental model was shown to be moderated by an individual’s working memory load (Valadao...). Furthermore, working memory can be updated as an individual develop (age difference in.. Reference). These previous studies suggest that