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Rosemary Strasser, a UNO faculty member in the Neuroscience Program, was a co-author on a recent paper in the international journal Age. The study evaluated the impact of variation in early testosterone exposure on lifespan in the house sparrow, a common North American songbird.  A summary of the paper follows below, and a link to the paper can be found here:http://tinyurl.com/6qd7ezu

The presence or absence of certain hormones during prenatal development can organize the brain and influence the future behavior of offspring. Many mothers "program" the development of their offspring through the transmission of maternal steroid hormones to their young. These early maternal hormones can have long-lasting effects on the growth, development, behavior, and survival of their young. Birds are an excellent model system to study these maternal effects because the mothers naturally vary the amount of steroid hormones they deposit into their eggs and the young develop outside the mother. In many bird species, the concentration of these maternal steroids, mostly androgens like testosterone, can "organize" the brain and influence the behavior of the offspring well into adulthood. In a recent publication, we report that injections of a physiological dose of testosterone (T) into yolks of freshly laid eggs of a small, seasonally breeding songbird, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus), increased survivorship during the first years of life. In addition, survival effects of developmental T exposure were sex-dependent, with males generally having a higher risk of death their first year.  T treatment resulted in higher body mass at 3–4months of age which subsequently influenced mortality risk. This study suggest that although testosterone-enhanced survivorship could potentially increase lifetime reproductive success, there is a “cost” associated with this. Specifically, testosterone may increase mortality risk from extrinsic factors in young male house sparrows by altering adult sexual and aggressive behavior, by increasing the risk of exposure to infectious disease, predation, and injury, or by alterations in physiology early in life that could, in turn, affect health, physiological function and survivorship later in life.

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Neuroscience

The study of the biological basis of behavior is one of the most rapidly growing
areas of life sciences, reflecting the importance of the fundamental and applied interest in how neurons work on an individual basis, and how collections of neurons mediate behavior  and cognition.

The College of Arts and Sciences at UNO has established the first undergraduate neuroscience degree program in the Nebraska system to educate students bound for graduate programs in neuroscience as well as various careers in the health or health-related fields.

Students working toward completion of this degree will benefit from the expertise of existing faculty in the UNO departments of Biology and Psychology along one of two tracks:  Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience or Integrative Behavioral Science.

An undergraduate major in neuroscience will place students in the position of
moving into one of multiple career trajectories upon completion of the degree.

First, graduates of the program will be in an excellent position to immediately and successfully be recruited by one of the more than 200 graduate programs in neuroscience and related areas, and pursue advanced degrees. These opportunities include working with faculty at UNMC’s growing training programs and opportunities.  The newly established Department of Pharmacology and Experimental  Neuroscience at UNMC brings together experts in neuropharmacology with those with expertise in neurodegenerative diseases, and new and exciting graduate programs are likely to emerge from this new department. Neuroscience and related disciplines constitute among the best funded and active programs at UNMC. The Center for Neurovirology and Neurodegenerative Disorders (CNND) and the associated Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP) at UNMC constitute an important employment and training outlet for graduates of an undergraduate neuroscience major.

Second, graduates from either of the proposed neuroscience tracks would have most or all of the required courses for admission to medical schools, veterinary programs, and a host of other health-related professional programs.

Third, graduates of the neuroscience major will possess intellectual and methodological skill-sets that will make them highly attractive for laboratory technicians and assistants in local, regional, and national university and medical school laboratories.

Fourth, the growing emphasis on pharmaceutical agents that affect psychological function is driving employment in corporate pharmaceutical firms, for which graduates of the neuroscience major would be competitive.

Finally, students will emerge from the major with the ability to think across disciplines, to formulate questions and seek answers, to interpret data and draw conclusions, and to effectively communicate the outcome of these processes to a target audience. This suite of skills will make neuroscience majors eligible for a variety of career opportunities that are outside of the discipline of neuroscience.