Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
PhD, Univeristy of Illinois
Phone: (631) 632-7821
banderson@notes.cc.sunysb.edu
Office: Psychology B, Room 216
Research
Brenda Anderson is interested in understanding the biological mechanisms through which exercise and stress influence brain function. To model the effects of exercise, she uses voluntary wheel running; to model the effects of stress she uses a predator threat stimulus. Current preliminary studies in Dr. Anderson lab demonstrate that exercise reduces the progression of seizure during excitotoxicity, but increases the likelihood of cell loss. The lab is currently validating a new model of stress, which will be used to test whether stress affects the number of synapses in the hippocampus and amygdala. Three general approaches are used to explore the effects of exercise and stress—behavioral analyses, quantitative anatomical analyses (electron microscopy), and quantitative histochemistry (cytochrome oxidase histochemistry). The lab is also working on validating the use of secondary ion mass spectrometry with a 50 nm lateral resolution for use in biological tissue.
- Publications
- Laboratory Personnel
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- Anderson, B., Rapp, D., Baek, D., Coburn-Litvak, P., McCloskey, D., and Robinson, J. (2000) Exercise influences 8-arm radial maze performance, Physiology and Behavior, 70(5), 425-429.
- Anderson, B. J., Gatley, S. J., Rapp, D., Coburn-Litvak, P. S., and Volkow, N. D. (2000) The influence of enriched environment on striatal D1/muscarinic receptor ratio in aging rats, Brain Research, 872, 262-265.
- McCloskey, D. P., Adamo, D., Anderson, B. J. (2001) Exercise Increases Metabolic Capacity in the Motor Cortex and Striatum, but not in the Hippocampus, Brain Research, 891(1-2):168-175.
- Anderson, B. J., Relucio, K. I. Eckburg, P. B. (2002). Exercise and motor skill learning increase the thickness of the motor cortex, Learning and Memory, 9(1):1-9.
- Tata, D. and Anderson, B.J. (2002). A new method for the investigation of capillary structure, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 113(2):197-204.
- Coburn-Litvak, P. S., Tata, D., Gorby, H. E., Richardson, G, McCloskey, D. P. and Anderson, B. J. Corticosterone reduces mitochondrial, but not glial volume fraction in hippocampal CA3, submitted.
- Coburn-Litvak, P. S., Pothakos, K., Tata, D., McCloskey, D. P. and Anderson, B. J. Elevating corticosterone for 21 days disrupts spatial reference, but not working memory in rats, submitted.