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Courses:
Human
Physiology (BIO 270), Animal
Physiology (BIO 370), Neurobiology (BIO 445)
Research Interests:
Neurobiology - elucidation of the principles by which sensory
information is transformed into movement using the simple spinal
reflexes in rats.
The overall goal of our laboratory is to elucidate
the principles by which sensory information is transformed into
movement. More specifically, we investigate simple spinal reflexes in
rats. Our research currently has two focuses: 1) The nervous systems of
young animals is remarkably sensitive to sensory stimulation. For
example, placing a patch over a kitten's eye for as little as one week
early in life causes permanent blindness in that eye. Similarly, we
have found that a brief injury to the foot of neonatal rats can lead to
permanent increases in the rat's pain sensitivity as an adult. Current
studies are designed to determine the underlying neural mechanisms and
functional significance. Our results may impact the care of premature
infants who typically experience pain in the neonatal intensive care
unit. 2) When we touch a hot saucepan we rapidly remove our hand to
prevent injury. The movement is a spinal reflex known as the flexion
withdrawal reflex. Surprisingly, the direction of movement is not
always directly away from the injurious stimuli. Our research studies
the spatial transformation between stimulus location and movement
direction for flexion withdrawal reflexes of the rat tail.
Selected
Publications: *undergraduate co-author
Cleland, C.L. and *Bauer, R.E. (2002) Spatial
transformations in the withdrawal response of the tail in intact and
spinalized rats. Journal of Neuroscence -Rapid Communications,
22:5265-5270
Cleland, C.L. (2002) Integrating recent advances in neuroscience into
undergraduate neuroscience and physiology classes. Advances in
Physiological Education, 26:271-277.
Silva, E., Cleland, C.L. and Gebhart, G.F. (1997) Contributions of NMDA
receptors to mustard oil induced hyperalgesia in the spinalized rat,
Experimental Brain Research, 117:379-388
Jiang, M.C., Cleland, C.L. and Gebhart, G.F. (1995) Cellular properties
of dorsal horn neurons in vivo. Journal of Neurophysiology, 74:1819-1827
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