Browsing by Department "Psychology"

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Nociceptive (Pain) Input After Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Enhances Secondary Injury: Identifying Treatments That Can Be Translated to Clinical Practice
Psychology; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/367; DOD-Army-Medical Research Acquisition Activity
Spinal cord injury (SCI) brings a high cost, both in terms of medical treatment and the individual's long-term wellbeing. The degree of injury depends upon both the initial tissue damage (primary injury) and the subsequent loss of tissue in the surrounding region (secondary injury). It is now recognized that nearly half the cell loss is due to secondary injury. Because the processes that contribute to secondary injury unfold over the course of hours to days, it represents a treatable clinical target. Our work has shown that pain input after injury can expand the area of secondary injury, amplifying tissue loss and undermining long-term recovery. This is an important observation, because many spinal cord injuries, especially in military action, are accompanied by additional tissue damage (polytrauma) that will engage pain fibers. If these wounds are at, or below, the level of the SCI, the sensory signals may generate little ¬"psychology" pain (because neural transmission to the brain is disrupted). The sensory signals can, however, still engage neurobiological processes within the spinal cord that influence tissue loss. Of particular concern, our work has shown that incoming pain signals can drive a state of over-excitation that fuels cell death and leads to a breakdown in the blood-spinal cord barrier (BSCD). This barrier normally keeps red blood and other cells from infiltrating the neural tissue (while allowing essential nutrients to pass). When the barrier is broken, hemoglobin leaks out of the blood vessels into the surrounding tissue, causing an area of hemorrhage that kills neurons and non-neuronal cells (e.g., the oligodendrocytes that ensheathe axons within the white matter). This, in conjunction with an amplified immune response, could feed a rise in pro-inflammatory cytokines that leads to further cell loss. Acting together, the hemorrhage will expand the region of secondary injury and thereby undermine long-term recovery. Pain input after SCI appears to fuel hemorrhage in two ways. One is by engaging a signal pathway that leads to the death of the endothelial cells that form the BSCD. This process is known as progressive hemorrhagic necrosis. It can be identified by the activation of particular proteins (e.g., Sur1-Trpm4) and the fragmentation of capillaries. The second key process involves an increase in blood pressure (hypertension). Interestingly, this cardiac event is not due to a local (spinally-mediated) effect (as occurs, for example, in autonomic dysreflexia). Instead, new research has revealed that pain-induced hypertension and hemorrhage depend upon brain systems. Supporting this, we have shown that cutting the surviving fibers blocks the adverse effect of noxious stimulation. Inhibiting brain function (via a medically induced coma) also has a protective effect. These surprising data suggest that secondary tissue loss after SCI depends, in part, on brain systems. Interestingly, blocking "psychological" pain with an opiate analgesic (morphine) does not counter the adverse effect of stimulation. This suggests that the damage is due to engaging the underlying neural processes, not the resultant experience of pain. New work has shown that this neural activity can be blocked by inhibiting cellular activity within the spinal cord using the local anesthetic lidocaine. A limitation of past studies is that sensory fibers were artificially driven using a brief period (6 minutes) of intermittent electrical stimulation. New data has shown that selectively engaging pain fibers, by applying the irritant capsaicin (the active ingredient of chili peppers), leads to a prolonged period of hemorrhage after SCI and undermines long-term recovery. The present proposal will use this treatment to explore the circumstances under which pain input affects tissue loss and the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie this effect. More importantly, we seek to show how two treatments can be used to reduce the adverse effects of pain input on injury. We propose that inducing a coma-like state with pentobarbital will attenuate hemorrhage after injury. We also propose that blocking neural conduction along spared fibers, by slowing infusing lidocaine into the spinal cord above the injury, will reduce capsaicin-induced hemorrhage. The benefits of these manipulations will be evident from a reduction of hemoglobin infiltration and reduced expression of proteins associated with cell death and inflammation. We focus on the beneficial effects of general anesthesia and spinally applied lidocaine because these treatments can be readily translated to clinical practice. Indeed, our work suggests that epidural lidocaine given soon after injury could provide both relief from pain and halt the pain-induced expansion of secondary injury. Because nearly all military-related SCI involve polytrauma, this treatment could become a standard of care. This treatment is routinely used to attenuate pain during child birth. Risks are minimal. The potential benefits are high. Given additional empirical data, mapping out treatment effectiveness, the procedures we explore could be rapidly transitioned to humans. The heuristic is that, if we can spare just 10% of the ascending/descending fibers, the person will walk out of the hospital. Implementing these procedures could help meet this goal, and thereby dramatically improve long-term quality of life.
SBP: Collaborative Research: Gender Discrimination in Hiring for STEM Graduates
Psychology; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/327; National Science Foundation
This interdisciplinary project will use cutting-edge technology to study the labor market for computer science graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. Although women?s share in STEM employment has been growing in non-computer science occupations, their share in computer science occupations has been declining since the 1990s. Because computer science occupations account for 50% of STEM workers, this decline is slowing the growth of women?s share in STEM fields overall, and suggests significant untapped potential that could improve US productivity and competitiveness. One reason that women may not seek out or remain in computer science fields is that they are treated differently than men during the hiring process. This project uses a laboratory experiment in the field on first-line hiring managers to determine first if there is differential treatment of women in hiring recent computer science graduates. If there is such a difference, it will determine the characteristics of women who are more likely to be treated negatively as well as general characteristics of firms that are more likely to exhibit differential treatment. Resumes will be randomly generated to include different characteristics that, if their inclusion helps women more than men, will indicate potential reasons for this differential treatment. The experiment will also use eye-tracking to determine how recruiters visually process computer science resumes and whether or not there are differences between how they process male vs. female resumes. These combined results will help to differentiate between economic theories of discrimination, and will advance social science by increasing our theoretical understanding of when and how differential treatment occurs. Results from this study can be used to make recommendations to individuals applying for these positions and institutions which advise them, to employers who desire to hire the best candidates, and to policy makers who want to increase meritocratic hiring in STEM. The results will thus lead to a more diverse and competitive workforce, increasing the economic competitiveness of the U.S. This project combines two cutting-edge methodologies, eye-tracking and resume-randomization, to study gender discrimination at the first stage of the STEM hiring process. It will determine if there is differential treatment by gender in how first-line hiring managers treat resumes, whether the treatment is similar or different along the applicant quality distribution, and if there are industry characteristics (ex. firm size, industry code) that would lead to higher or lower levels of differential treatment. Finally, this study will differentiate between different theories of statistical and taste-based discrimination. Technical recruiters in charge of first-line interview decisions will be solicited at university recruitment fairs and industry fairs to view and process hypothetical resumes for Computer Science majors. They will be asked to follow their standard hiring practice and to choose resumes to ?move to the next stage.? The resumes will then be redisplayed and participants will rate each resume and give the expected starting salary and position. While participants are viewing the resumes, their eye-movements will be tracked via an eye-tracking device. Following the resume rating exercise, they will answer a short demographic survey. Resumes with randomized inputs based on actual resumes will be created via a randomization program. Outcomes of interest include information on ratings, moving the resume to the next stage, position placement, salary ranges, time spent on individual resumes, time spent on and number of looks at specific parts of resumes. The coefficients and significance on the coefficient of gender determine whether or not there is differential treatment by gender, and if so, for which women and by what kinds of firms. Time spent on resumes by gender interacted with differential treatment findings provide information on use of heuristics in the decision-making process. Time spent viewing specific parts of the resume (areas of interest or AOI) and tracking the order that recruiters view parts of the resume provide insight into their decision-making processes. Gender interactions with randomized inputs that support or contradict stereotypes will be used to test employee taste-based discrimination and levels-based statistical discrimination. Position placement by gender will test customer taste-based discrimination. Comparing predicted outcomes with actual outcomes by gender of resume be used to test variance-based statistical discrimination. This project directly impacts the full participation of women in STEM and will (1) improve the well-being of individuals in society, (2) develop a diverse and competitive workforce and (3) increase economic competitiveness. Results from this study can be used to make recommendations to individuals applying for these positions and the institutions who advise them, to employers who desire to hire the best candidates, and to policy makers who want more women and minorities in STEM. The methodology will (4) promote future research on other hiring and discrimination questions. In addition, this project will (5) incorporate graduate and undergraduate students, involving them in cutting-edge research and providing them with a platform to undertake their own independent work. Graduate and undergraduate students will receive mentoring and research skills, increasing their attractiveness to employers and advanced degree programs.
Time Lag as a Moderator of Parental Control and SES and Child Anxiety Outcomes
Psychology; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/503; DHHS-NIH-National Institute of Mental Health
Project Summary Roughly one-third (31.8%) of adolescents will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder 1, with as many as 20% of young children already showing symptoms that will predict problems across their lifetime 2, 3. Substantial time and effort have resulted in a growing literature on the development of anxiety in childhood. Multiple contextual contributors to risk for anxiety problems have been identified, including parental behaviors 15,16, developmental age 17, and socioeconomic status 18. Parenting behaviors 15, 19, 20, parental control in particular15, and socioeconomic disadvantage18, 21, 22, predict increased risk for anxiety problems across development and comprise a substantial portion of the available literature evaluating the influence of context on childhood anxiety. Yet, the search continues for precisely how environment-based risk for anxiety unfolds across childhood, ultimately manifesting in child symptoms 12, 15. Significant effort has been placed on understanding the mechanisms of anxiety risk 23–25 and how to either treat or modify these mechanisms 8, 10. Critically, the timing by which context “gets under the skin” and ultimately results in elevated anxiety in children has been relatively ignored, perhaps as a result of adopting standard time lags in developmental research (6-12 months between assessments) and/or the absence of sophisticated statistical techniques that allow for tests of time lag as a key variable. The absence of such work has likely resulted from limited methods for considering the ways that temporal lag can moderate effects sizes. The work of this fellowship will include testing the role of temporal lag in the link between parental control (study aim #1) and SES (study aim #2) and anxiety symptoms during more and less sensitive periods of development. This work will also provide an important basis for understanding anxiety development across childhood and inform both subsequent empirical designs and the development of targeted programs of prevention in schools, homes, and communities. The current project is designed with an integrated training plan that will prepare the fellowship applicant for a future career as an independent interdisciplinary researcher. The three overarching training goals are: (1) Learn to conduct and disseminate work rooted in lag as a moderator meta-analysis (LAMMA), (2) build a foundational knowledge in adolescent development, and (3) advance Tristin’s professional development to facilitate an interdisciplinary researcher career. These training goals will effectively prepare the applicant for a future research career and lay the foundation for future research using LAMMA and examining anxiety trajectories across childhood as this development is related to contextual factors.