Analyzing game footage to identify triggers of aggression, such as provocation, crowd influence, and team reinforcement, helps better understand how these behaviors are activated in real time. Focusing on the social and behavioral factors that influence neural pathways underlying aggression in male football players can Impact on harmful Off-Field behavior and brain injury Risk. My thesis is in football the team culture like coaching strategies, peer pressure, and cultural expectations of masculinity can teach male players to be aggressive. When players act aggressively and repeatedly, hard hits can harm and mess with the brain, making some more likely to act aggressively off the field and risk long-term brain problems. I propose the question on how can social and behavioral factors aligned with aggression affect neural pathways in male football players? With a hypothesis of Male football players exposed to aggression in crowd influence, and team reinforcement will display higher levels of aggressive behavior during gameplay triggering harmful off-field behavior and brain injury risk. There are three different phases I did in my studies, Phase 1: Dive into case studies and research on traumatic brain injuries related to CTE. Phase 2: Analyze the social environment surrounding football in film. In high-level leagues like the National Football League, players are often encouraged to be aggressive. Especially in team culture, coaching strategies, and peer pressure reward hard hits. Phase 3: Qulatrics surveys focusing on dominance, and emotional intensity. Seeing how strong cultural expectations around masculinity reinforce this behavior. The significance in this research is to show how Football environments often praise and reward aggression. Which could lead to shaping brain function and behavior in harmful ways. If you combine that with repeated head trauma you will see aggressive patterning in these players.

Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) are a unique model species due to their ability to form a long-lasting attachment with another adult (pair bond) and their exhibition of biparental care. There is also extensive research on their behavior and physiology, making them a great model for parental behavior. It is important to note that the strength of a pair bond may impact parenting behaviors. Stress can have a wide range of behavioral and physiological ramifications on animals and their offspring. This study focuses on transport-induced stress, specifically regarding transportation between facilities. The groups of interest in this project include breeder pairs born and raised in the lab, never experiencing transportation, breeder pairs where both animals experienced transportation, and hybrid pairs where one parent experienced transportation and the other did not. Some transported and hybrid pairs were not observed until their fourth and fifth litters. Parental behavior toward the pups was quantified for two days, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. This allowed us to observe how attentive parents are to their offspring. By studying these behaviors, we can determine how transport stress may affect parenting behavior and offspring. These effects may have long-lasting implications for research project recruitment.

Low arousal impairs attention, decision making, and reasoning, but its neural effects vary across individuals. Functional connectivity (FC) provides a useful framework for examining how coordinated activity across large-scale brain networks changes with arousal. Previous fMRI studies have reported increased sensory and motor FC during low arousal, but these findings are largely based on group-level analyses that may obscure meaningful individual differences. Here, we use precision fMRI to identify reliable, participant-specific patterns of arousal-related FC changes. We conducted two analyses using resting-state fMRI data. The group-level analysis included participants with more than 5 minutes of usable data (N = 97, 51 female, mean age = 23.1 years), while the precision analysis included participants with more than 20 minutes of data (N = 9, 4 female, mean age = 25.2 years). Participants rated their arousal after each scan on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = high arousal, 7 = low arousal). Only high-arousal (1–2) and low-arousal (6–7) runs were retained. Following standard preprocessing and denoising procedures, data were parcellated into 300 regions of interest using the Seitzman atlas. FC matrices were generated using Pearson correlations between regional time series. Group differences were assessed using the Network-Based Statistic. Consistent with prior work, group-level analyses revealed increased connectivity within the dorsal sensorimotor network during low arousal (t(38) = 4.50, NBS-corrected p < .001). Precision analyses uncovered additional individual-specific patterns, including increased frontoparietal and decreased auditory network connectivity. These findings suggest that precision fMRI can reveal stable neural signatures of arousal that are obscured by group averaging, improving our understanding of individual variability in brain states.

"Although there are many aspects to recognizing emotions, reading others' emotional states from facial expressions is a fundamental part of communication. Facial expressions are often interpreted immediately and are commonly associated with six universal emotions: sadness, anger, happiness, disgust, fear, and surprise. However, Botox, a cosmetic procedure, aims to limit facial movement as much as possible to prevent and smooth wrinkles, potentially hindering the interpretation of facial affect. As Botox becomes increasingly popular, understanding its effects on communication is important. This study aimed to understand how Botox influences accuracy in correctly identifying facial expressions associated with emotions and the perceived genuineness of those emotions. We used a between-subjects design, with one group surveyed with standard Facial Expression Recognition Test (FERT) face stimuli and the other group using FERT face stimuli modified with AI-generated Botox. Participants self-reported emotion intensity, sincerity, and which emotions best described the image. We predict that Botox may reduce the intensity, sincerity, and accuracy of emotion identification from facial expressions. These results may suggest that Botox leads to misinterpretation of emotions and compromises non-verbal communication, thereby potentially harming social relationships. Keywords: Botox, emotion, facial expressions, recognition, accuracy, sincerity, genuineness"