Amanda Gross

I am a second year graduate student in Dr Brenda Claiborne’s laboratory.  My research interests are directed towards cerebral lateralization, specifically within the hippocampus.  Lateralization is the restriction of neural activity relative to a specific behavior to one hemisphere of the brain, such as left hemisphere dominance observed in speech and language in humans.  The hippocampus has a central role in learning and memory.  Abnormal hippocampal lateralization has been observed in human schizophrenia, and changes in lateralization may contribute to learning and memory deficits that are observed during normal aging. 

Recent work from our lab has shown that Munc13-4, Rab3B, Rab 15, and Pclo, genes involved in the vesicular release of neurotransmitter (Sudhoff, 2004), are more highly expressed in the right hippocampal formation at postnatal day 6 (P6) in Sprague-Dawley rats, and that the preferential expression shifts to the left hippocampal formation by P9, and is maintained at least until P60 (Moskal et al., 2006). Other investigators (Poe et al., 2000) have shown that inactivation of the left hippocampus, but not the right, in aged Sprague-Dawley rats impairs radial eight-arm maze performance.  The objective of my dissertation will be to characterize hippocampal lateralization over the lifespan of Sprague-Dawley rats by examining gene expression and protein levels, any potential physiological differences, and any functional significance to behavior.

Moskal, J.R., Kroes, R.A., Otto, N.J., Rahimi, O., Claiborne, B.J. (2006) Distinct Patterns of Gene Expression in the Left and Right Hippocampal Formation of Developing Rats.  Hippocampus., 16. pp. 629-634.

Poe, G.R., Teed, R.G.W., Insel, N., White, R., McNaughton, B.L., Barnes, C.A. (2000) Partial Hippocampal Inactivation: Effects on Spatial Memory Performance in Aged and Young Rats.  Behavioral Neuroscience., 114. no. 5. pp. 940-949.

Sudhoff, T.C. (2004) The Synaptic Vesicle Cycle.  Annu. Rev. Neurosci., 27. pp. 509-547.