Amelia Ayotte

Responsibilities included shadowing and communication with providers to ensure proper medical charting, including background medical history, labs and imaging, and plan for treatment.

Responsibilities included cooking and cleaning, bathing and changing, and general upkeep of senior citizen's homes and selves.

Tadpoles can serve as model organisms for the developmental process of vertebrates that are in utero or in ovo at comparative developmental stages in their free-living larval state. The purpose of these experiments was to determine the effects of corticosteroid levels on learning in Cuban Treefrog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) tadpoles as a proxy for how elevated glucocorticoids during vertebrate development may influence learning. We completed three experiments. Experiment 1 explored differences in learning among individuals with acute and chronic elevations of corticosterone. Experiment 2 explored differences in learning among individuals exposed to high and low doses of exogenous corticosterone. Experiment 3 explored differences in learning among individuals with acute and chronic exposure to metyrapone, a glucocorticoid release blocker. For each experiment, groups of tadpoles were also distinguished between pseudoconditioned or true conditioned in the learning component of the experiment. After the conditioning period, learning behaviors were tested with a behavioral assay and data were analyzed through a two-way ANOVA. Overall, our findings indicate that having corticosterone reduced is detrimental for learning just like having increased levels of corticosterone or sustained low level elevations of corticosterone for too long negatively impacts learning.