Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2017 - 20202

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Author: search.filters.author.Canada, Kelsey LeighSubject: search.filters.subject.Neurosciences

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    Examining the co-development of episodic memory and hippocampal subfields – A longitudinal study
    (2020) Canada, Kelsey Leigh; Riggins, Tracy; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Episodic memory is a cornerstone ability that allows one to recall past events and the context in which they occur. Many different tasks have been used to assess the development of episodic memory during early childhood. Previous longitudinal work on individual tasks has noted accelerated changes from approximately 5 to 7 years, suggesting non-linear changes in memory ability during early childhood. However, the extent to which tasks relate to one another and are indicative of the latent construct of episodic memory is not known. Further, improvements in memory are thought to relate to underlying changes occurring in the functionally distinct subfields of the hippocampus (i.e., CA2-4/dentate gyrus (DG), CA1, and Subiculum) during this developmental period. This study examined changes in episodic memory ability, hippocampal subfield volume, and the relation between changes in episodic memory and volume of hippocampal subfields during early childhood (4 to 8 years) using longitudinal data and a structural equation modeling framework. Results suggest that episodic memory ability improves substantially during this period, with consistent improvements between 4 to 8 years. Further, there are robust increases in subiculum, CA1, and CA2-4/DG volume between 5 to 6 years of age. Finally, within this sample, there were relations between the development of hippocampal subfields and improvements on a single source memory task commonly used to assess episodic memory. Interestingly, this relation was most robust between subiculum and source memory. Overall, these results highlight the ability to use laboratory tasks to characterize developmental changes in episodic memory, highlight 5- to 6-years as a period of developmental change in hippocampal subfields, and further support a role of the hippocampus in supporting episodic memory.
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    Impact of Age and Experience on Pattern Separation
    (2017) Canada, Kelsey Leigh; Riggins, Tracy L; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The ability to remember highly detailed events and discriminate between them is thought to be supported by two distinct but complementary neural computational processes: pattern completion and pattern separation. The current study focused on the process of pattern separation, in which similar memories are assigned distinct representations, thus reducing the overlap between similar inputs. This process is measured behaviorally by tasking individuals with mnemonically discriminating between similar stimuli. The present study addressed the contribution of age and experience, which are difficult to distinguish during development, to pattern separation in adults and 9- to 11-year-old children, in whom this process and its supporting neural substrates are still developing. We examined differences in participant’s mnemonic discrimination of high-experience (e.g., own-race faces) and low-experience (e.g., other-race faces) stimuli. Results indicate better pattern separation overall in adults, and, that level of experience with a stimuli class may moderate age-related differences in pattern separation.