Scientific Paper Assignment 3 Instructions

Purpose

Our third scientific article analysis assignment will give you another opportunity to read a challenging paper in behavioral neuroscience. Remember, you are not expected to fully understand every sentence of this paper. The purpose of having you read this paper is to start slowly improving your ability to tackle difficult scientific papers, and the questions serve to dig a little deeper about what you read. The ability to thoughtfully read a scientific article will make you better prepared to handle this caliber of paper in other courses and will allow you to more readily attempt to read source material from scientific news that gets passed around on social media.

For this week’s paper, please read the paper, “Use of fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to assess phasic dopamine release in rat models of early postpartum maternal behavior and neglect” by Shnitko, et al. In doing so, you may find some terms and concepts that will be new to you. Before you read, see some definitions below that will help you understand as you read.

FSCV (fast-scan cyclic voltammetry) : Using microelectrodes, this is a real-time technique used to induce electrical activity in a specific brain area in order to detect the concentration of a specific neurotransmitter or hormone. This is a faster version that can perceive changes that occur within milliseconds.

In Vivo: in a live animal

Tonic: A physiological process (in this case, dopamine release) that occurs consistently and gradually over a period of time.

Phasic: A physiological process (in this case, dopamine release) that occurs in short, rapid bursts.

Skills and knowledge

You will be using reading comprehension skills to make connections within the paper about why the study happened in the first place, what they used to do their experiment, what they found, and what these results mean for future studies. As with last week, you are welcome to reach out for help. You can also refer back to the feedback from Jayden on previous assignments which is located on blackboard .

Preparatory steps

1. Read the abstract of the paper. Then read the questions for the assignment. You’ll notice that you’re going to have to “dig in” to the paper to extract some of this information.

2. Read the rest of the paper with some of the assignment questions in mind. This will help you look out for important details that you might otherwise have overlooked.

Action steps

1. Highlight some of the pieces of the article that seem like they might help you answer the assignment questions (if you’re already a highlighter like me, use a different color to highlight potential information for the assignment).

2. Answer the questions in your own words . In the methods section, it might be hard to rephrase some of what they did especially if you’re not familiar with those methods. Please try to use your own language to the best of your ability.

Submission details

This assignment will be graded out of 10 points. Please submit your answers no later than 3:00 pm on Wednesday, 10/27. Full credit will be given if each answer is complete, mostly correct, and in your own words.

Now that you’ve read the paper, answer the questions below to help clarify some of your understanding of the content. Please answer in full sentences IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Each answer is worth one point.

Introduction/Background

1. The introduction mentions the importance of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in regulating maternal behavior. What two other brain regions project to the VTA and also regulate maternal behavior?

2. What reasons do the authors cite to rationalize why the technique called FSCV is necessary for accurately detecting dopamine transients in vivo?

3. Why do the authors think that gestational cocaine usage might interfere with dopamine signaling that is required for adequate maternal behavior? Discuss the behavioral and molecular impacts.

Methods

4. Describe the two postpartum experimental groups and what treatments they got.

5. In experiment 2, there were two stages of maternal behavior that were recorded and scored. What were they?

Results (Remember that significant results are denoted by either a #, *, or + depending on the comparison)

6. Explain the results in figure 1b-d.

7. Explain the results in figure 2c and 2d.

8. Explain the results in figure 4b and 4c.

Discussion and conclusions

9. Why do the authors believe that previous studies showed that tonic dopamine release was actually lower in postpartum rats when the current study shows that phasic dopamine release increases postpartum?

10. There were many maternal behavioral differences between the cocaine-exposed and the untreated moms. What behaviors mainly drove the differences seen in time spent attending to pups in the post-separation period and why does this make sense according to the authors?

Extra credit (up to 5 points)

11. Towards the end of the discussion, the authors pose three questions that could potentially be answered by future research: “What is the time course of postpartum dopamine dynamics? What aspect of gestational cocaine exposure dampens dopamine clearance and transient frequency? What is the role of pup-produced stimuli in maternal dopamine dynamics?” Attempt to broadly design an experiment that could help to answer ONE of these questions. An attempt will get you 1 point, and a really good attempt with a good level of detail will get you 5 points. A good answer will include experimental groups, treatment conditions, ways to measure results, and a hypothesis about the results.