Scholars@Duke
Christina L. Williams

Christina L. Williams

Professor Emerita of Psychology and Neuroscience
Psychology & Neuroscience
williams@psych.duke.edu
Psych & Neurosci Duke Univ, Box 91050, Durham, NC 27708-0086
Psych & Neurosci Duke Univ, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Absolute Winding Number Differentiates Mouse Spatial Navigation Strategies With Genetic Risk for Alzheimer's Disease.

Journal Article Front Neurosci · 2022 Spatial navigation and orientation are emerging as promising markers for altered cognition in prodromal Alzheimer's disease, and even in cognitively normal individuals at risk for Alzheimer's disease. The different APOE gene alleles confer various degrees ... Full text Link to item Cite

Corrigendum: Absolute winding number differentiates mouse spatial navigation strategies with genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Journal Article Front Neurosci · 2022 [This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.848654.]. ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dietary Choline Protects Against Cognitive Decline After Surgery in Mice.

Journal Article Front Cell Neurosci · 2021 Perioperative neurocognitive disorders (PNDs) are a common complication following procedures such as orthopedic surgery. Using a mouse model of tibial fracture and repair surgery, we have previously shown an increase in neuroinflammation and hippocampal-de ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Cholinergic System Modulates Memory and Hippocampal Plasticity via Its Interactions with Non-Neuronal Cells.

Journal Article Frontiers in immunology · January 2017 Degeneration of central cholinergic neurons impairs memory, and enhancement of cholinergic synapses improves cognitive processes. Cholinergic signaling is also anti-inflammatory, and neuroinflammation is increasingly linked to adverse memory, especially in ... Full text Cite

Relationship between exercise behavior, cardiorespiratory fitness, and cognitive function in early breast cancer patients treated with doxorubicin-containing chemotherapy: a pilot study.

Journal Article Appl Physiol Nutr Metab · June 2014 The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between self-reported exercise behavior, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and cognitive function in early breast cancer patients. Thirty-seven breast cancer patients following completion of chemothe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Novel Inversions in Auditory Sequences Provide Evidence for Spontaneous Subtraction of Time and Number

Journal Article Timing and Time Perception · January 1, 2014 Animals, including fish, birds, rodents, non-human primates, and pre-verbal infants are able to discriminate the duration and number of events without the use of language. In this paper, we present the results of six experiments exploring the capability of ... Full text Cite

Acquisition of response thresholds for timed performance is regulated by a calcium-responsive transcription factor, CaRF.

Journal Article Genes Brain Behav · August 2013 Interval timing within the seconds-to-minutes range involves the interaction of the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia via dopaminergic-glutamatergic pathways. Because the secreted protein brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is able to modulate dopam ... Full text Link to item Cite

Impaired interval timing and spatial-temporal integration in mice deficient in CHL1, a gene associated with schizophrenia.

Journal Article Timing & time perception (Leiden, Netherlands) · January 2013 Interval timing is crucial for decision-making and motor control and is impaired in many neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia - a neurodevelopmental disorder with a strong genetic component. Several gene mutations, polymorphisms or rare copy ... Full text Cite

Sex differences in counting and timing

Journal Article Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience · December 1, 2011 Full text Cite

Prenatal choline deficiency does not enhance hippocampal vulnerability after kainic acid-induced seizures in adulthood.

Journal Article Brain research · September 2011 Choline is a vital nutrient needed during early development for both humans and rodents. Severe dietary choline deficiency during pregnancy leads to birth defects, while more limited deficiency during mid- to late pregnancy causes deficits in hippocampal p ... Full text Cite

Water maze experience and prenatal choline supplementation differentially promote long-term hippocampal recovery from seizures in adulthood.

Journal Article Hippocampus · June 2011 Status epilepticus (SE) in adulthood dramatically alters the hippocampus and produces spatial learning and memory deficits. Some factors, like environmental enrichment and exercise, may promote functional recovery from SE. Prenatal choline supplementation ... Full text Cite

Impaired social recognition memory in recombination activating gene 1-deficient mice.

Journal Article Brain Res · April 6, 2011 The recombination activating genes (RAGs) encode two enzymes that play key roles in the adaptive immune system. RAG1 and RAG2 mediate VDJ recombination, a process necessary for the maturation of B- and T-cells. Interestingly, RAG1 is also expressed in the ... Full text Link to item Cite

Estradiol alters Fos-immunoreactivity in the hippocampus and dorsal striatum during place and response learning in middle-aged but not young adult female rats.

Journal Article Endocrinology · March 2011 Evidence from lesion and inactivation studies suggests that the hippocampus (HPC) and dorsal striatum compete for control over navigation behavior, and there is some evidence in males that the structure with greater relative activation controls behavior. E ... Full text Cite

Rapid and acute effects of estrogen on time perception in male and female rats.

Journal Article Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · January 2011 Sex differences in the rapid and acute effects of estradiol on time perception were investigated in adult male and female Sprague-Dawley rats. Because estradiol has been shown to increase striatal dopamine release, it may be able to modify time perception ... Full text Cite

Sex differences in counting and timing.

Journal Article Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · January 2011 Full text Cite

Voluntary running prevents progressive memory decline and increases adult hippocampal neurogenesis and growth factor expression after whole-brain irradiation.

Journal Article Cancer research · November 2010 Whole-brain irradiation (WBI) therapy produces progressive learning and memory deficits in patients with primary or secondary brain tumors. Exercise enhances memory and adult hippocampal neurogenesis in the intact brain, so we hypothesized that exercise ma ... Full text Cite

Reduced cortical BDNF expression and aberrant memory in Carf knock-out mice.

Journal Article J Neurosci · June 2, 2010 Transcription factors are a key point of convergence between the cell-intrinsic and extracellular signals that guide synaptic development and brain plasticity. Calcium-response factor (CaRF) is a unique transcription factor first identified as a binding pr ... Full text Link to item Cite

The development and stability of estrogen-modulated spatial navigation strategies in female rats.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · March 2010 Adult female rats with high levels of circulating estradiol are biased to use a place strategy to solve an ambiguous spatial navigation task and those with low levels are biased to use a response strategy. We examined the development of this hormonal modul ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline availability alters the context sensitivity of Pavlovian conditioning in adult rats.

Journal Article Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · December 2008 The effects of prenatal choline availability on Pavlovian conditioning were assessed in adult male rats (3-4 mo). Neither supplementation nor deprivation of prenatal choline affected the acquisition and extinction of simple Pavlovian conditioned excitation ... Full text Cite

Prenatal-choline supplementation differentially modulates timing of auditory and visual stimuli in aged rats.

Journal Article Brain research · October 2008 Choline supplementation of the maternal diet has a long-term facilitative effect on the interval-timing ability and temporal memory of the offspring. Here, we examined whether prenatal-choline supplementation has modality-specific effects on duration discr ... Full text Cite

Oscillatory bands, neuronal synchrony and hippocampal function: implications of the effects of prenatal choline supplementation for sleep-dependent memory consolidation.

Journal Article Brain research · October 2008 Choline supplementation of the maternal diet has long-term facilitative effects on spatial and temporal memory processes in the offspring. To further delineate the impact of early nutritional status on brain and behavior, we examined effects of prenatal-ch ... Full text Cite

Spatial memory and hippocampal plasticity are differentially sensitive to the availability of choline in adulthood as a function of choline supply in utero.

Journal Article Brain research · October 2008 Altered dietary choline availability early in life leads to persistent changes in spatial memory and hippocampal plasticity in adulthood. Developmental programming by early choline nutrition may determine the range of adult choline intake that is optimal f ... Full text Cite

Food for thought: brain, genes, and nutrition.

Journal Article Brain research · October 2008 Full text Cite

Age-related declines in exploratory behavior and markers of hippocampal plasticity are attenuated by prenatal choline supplementation in rats.

Journal Article Brain research · October 2008 Supplemental choline in the maternal diet produces a lasting enhancement in memory in offspring that resists age-related decline and is accompanied by neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and neurochemical changes in the hippocampus. The present study was d ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline supplementation attenuates neuropathological response to status epilepticus in the adult rat hippocampus.

Journal Article Neurobiology of disease · May 2008 Prenatal choline supplementation (SUP) protects adult rats against spatial memory deficits observed after excitotoxin-induced status epilepticus (SE). To examine the mechanism underlying this neuroprotection, we determined the effects of SUP on a variety o ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline supplementation alters the timing, emotion, and memory performance (TEMP) of adult male and female rats as indexed by differential reinforcement of low-rate schedule behavior.

Journal Article Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · March 2008 Choline availability in the maternal diet has a lasting effect on brain and behavior of the offspring. To further delineate the impact of early nutritional status, we examined effects of prenatal-choline supplementation on timing, emotion, and memory perfo ... Full text Cite

Common representations of abstract quantities

Journal Article Current Directions in Psychological Science · June 1, 2007 Representations of abstract quantities such as time and number are essential for survival. A number of studies have revealed that both humans and nonhuman animals are able to nonverbally estimate time and number; striking similarities in the behavioral dat ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline availability modulates hippocampal neurogenesis and neurogenic responses to enriching experiences in adult female rats.

Journal Article The European journal of neuroscience · April 2007 Increased dietary intake of choline early in life improves performance of adult rats on memory tasks and prevents their age-related memory decline. Because neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus also declines with age, we investigated whether prenatal choli ... Full text Cite

Combined organizational and activational effects of short and long photoperiods on spatial and temporal memory in rats.

Journal Article Behavioural processes · February 2007 The present study examined the effects of photoperiod on spatial and temporal memory in adult Sprague-Dawley rats that were conceived and reared in different day lengths, i.e., short day (SD-8:16 light/dark) and long day (LD-16:8 light/dark). Both male and ... Full text Cite

Commentary: Food for thought and for repair

Journal Article Behavioral Neuroscience · 2007 Cite

Developmental periods of choline sensitivity provide an ontogenetic mechanism for regulating memory capacity and age-related dementia.

Journal Article Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · January 2007 In order to determine brain and behavioral sensitivity of nutrients that may serve as inductive signals during early development, we altered choline availability to rats during 7 time frames spanning embryonic day (ED) 6 through postnatal day (PD) 75 and e ... Full text Cite

alpha7 Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors and temporal memory: synergistic effects of combining prenatal choline and nicotine on reinforcement-induced resetting of an interval clock.

Journal Article Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · March 2006 We previously showed that prenatal choline supplementation could increase the precision of timing and temporal memory and facilitate simultaneous temporal processing in mature and aged rats. In the present study, we investigated the ability of adult rats t ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline supplementation advances hippocampal development and enhances MAPK and CREB activation.

Journal Article FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · March 2004 Choline is an essential nutrient for animals and humans. Previous studies showed that supplementing the maternal diet with choline during the second half of gestation in rats permanently enhances memory performance of the adult offspring. Here we show that ... Full text Cite

Spatial memory retention is enhanced by acute and continuous estradiol replacement.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · February 2004 Estradiol replacement to ovariectomized female rats causes dramatic changes in hippocampal structure and function as well as in performance on hippocampally dependent tasks. Using a delayed matching-to-place version of the water maze, the present study exa ... Full text Cite

Metabolic imprinting of choline by its availability during gestation: implications for memory and attentional processing across the lifespan.

Journal Article Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · September 2003 A growing body of research supports the view that choline is an essential nutrient during early development that has long-lasting effects on memory and attentional processes throughout the lifespan. This review describes the known effects of alterations in ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline deficiency decreases the cross-sectional area of cholinergic neurons in the medial septal nucleus.

Journal Article Brain research · July 2003 Levels of dietary choline in utero influence postnatal cognitive performance. To better understand this phenomenon, forebrain cholinergic neurons were studied in the 8-9 month old offspring of dams fed a control or choline-deficient diet from EDs 11-17. Se ... Full text Cite

Melatonin increases survival and inhibits oxidative and amyloid pathology in a transgenic model of Alzheimer's disease.

Journal Article Journal of neurochemistry · June 2003 Increased levels of a 40-42 amino-acid peptide called the amyloid beta protein (A beta) and evidence of oxidative damage are early neuropathological markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previous investigations have demonstrated that melatonin is decreased ... Full text Cite

Choline availability during embryonic development alters the localization of calretinin in developing and aging mouse hippocampus.

Journal Article Nutritional neuroscience · April 2003 Choline availability in the diet during pregnancy alters fetal brain biochemistry with resulting behavioral changes that persist throughout the lifetime of the offspring. In the present study, the effects of dietary choline on the onset of GABAergic neuron ... Full text Cite

Prenatal choline supplementation increases NGF levels in the hippocampus and frontal cortex of young and adult rats.

Journal Article Brain research · August 2002 Female Sprague-Dawley rats received approximately 300 mg/kg per day of choline chloride through their drinking water on days 11 of pregnancy through birth and the level of nerve growth factor (NGF) in the hippocampus and frontal cortex of their male offspr ... Full text Cite

Memory retention is modulated by acute estradiol and progesterone replacement.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · April 2001 Ovarian hormones alter spine density of hippocampal granule and pyramidal cells in young adult and aging female rats (P. Miranda, C. L. Williams, & G. Einstein, 1999; C. S. Woolley, 1998). The present study used a delayed matching-to-place version of the w ... Full text Cite

Sustained Attention in Adult Mice is Modulated by Prenatal Choline Availability

Journal Article International Journal of Comparative Psychology · 2001 Cite

Prenatal choline exposure alters hippocampal responsiveness to cholinergic stimulation in adulthood.

Journal Article Brain Res Dev Brain Res · September 30, 2000 Manipulation of dietary choline levels during gestation results in enduring neurobehavioral changes in offspring that last into adulthood. Alterations of hippocampal function and memory are among the most striking changes. Depending upon the measures asses ... Full text Link to item Cite

Choline availability to the developing rat fetus alters adult hippocampal long-term potentiation.

Journal Article Brain Res Dev Brain Res · December 10, 1999 Supplementation with choline during pregnancy in rats causes a long-lasting improvement of visuospatial memory of the offspring. To determine if the behavioral effects of choline are related to physiological changes in hippocampus, the effect of perinatal ... Full text Link to item Cite

Choline supplementation during prenatal development reduces proactive interference in spatial memory.

Journal Article Brain research. Developmental brain research · December 1999 Previous research has demonstrated that increasing dietary choline during early development can have long-lasting effects on cholinergic (Ch) function that are correlated with improvement of spatial memory ability in rats. The present study is designed to ... Full text Cite

Granule cells in aging rats are sexually dimorphic in their response to estradiol.

Journal Article The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · May 1999 Normal aging comprises cognitive decline, including deterioration of memory. It has been suggested that this decline in memory is sexually dimorphic because of the cessation in gonadal steroid secretion that occurs during reproductive aging in female, but ... Full text Cite

Prenatal availability of choline alters the development of acetylcholinesterase in the rat hippocampus.

Journal Article Developmental neuroscience · January 1999 Choline (Ch) supplementation during embryonic days (ED) 12-17 enhances spatial and temporal memory in adult and aged rats, whereas prenatal Ch deficiency impairs attention performance and accelerates age-related declines in temporal processing. To characte ... Full text Cite

Estrogen effects on cognition across the lifespan.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · October 1998 Full text Cite

Reactivation treatment prevents the memory-impairing effects of scopolamine in preweanling rats.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · August 1998 The authors report that the expression of a conditioned odor aversion is impaired in preweanling rats when they are conditioned on Postnatal Day 12 and tested under the influence of scopolamine hydrobromide (0.2 or 0.5 mg/kg, intraperitoneal) after a 48-hr ... Full text Cite

Hypertrophy of basal forebrain neurons and enhanced visuospatial memory in perinatally choline-supplemented rats.

Journal Article Brain research · June 1998 The effects of choline supplementation during two time-frames of early development on radial-arm maze performance and the morphology of basal forebrain neurons immunoreactive for the P75 neurotrophin receptor (NTR) in male and female Sprague-Dawley rats we ... Full text Cite

Prenatal dietary choline supplementation decreases the threshold for induction of long-term potentiation in young adult rats.

Journal Article J Neurophysiol · April 1998 Choline supplementation during gestation in rats leads to augmentation of spatial memory in adulthood. We hypothesized that prenatal (E12-E17) choline supplementation in the rat would lead to an enhancement of hippocampal synaptic plasticity as assessed by ... Full text Link to item Cite

Characterization of the facilitative effects of perinatal choline supplementation on timing and temporal memory.

Journal Article Neuroreport · September 1997 Perinatal choline supplementation can improve performance on a variety of spatial memory tasks in adulthood. In order to extend these studies, we have investigated the effects of perinatal choline supplementation on the performance of a peak-interval timin ... Full text Cite

Perinatal choline supplementation increases the threshold for chunking in spatial memory.

Journal Article Neuroreport · September 1997 Chunking and perinatal choline supplementation each provide rats with alternative memory processing advantages. Evidence from radial-arm maze performance of adult (2- to 5-month-old) rats indicates that chunking of multiple food types (sunflower seeds, Noy ... Full text Cite

Simultaneous temporal processing is sensitive to prenatal choline availability in mature and aged rats.

Journal Article Neuroreport · September 1997 Rats were trained at 2-4 months and at 24-26 months of age on a peak-interval timing procedure in which auditory and visual stimuli signaled two different fixed-interval schedules of reinforcement (15 and 30 s) that were presented simultaneously in a hiera ... Full text Cite

Hormonal modulation of the cutaneous initiation of lordosis in infant and adult rats.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · December 1993 The purpose of these experiments is to compare the regional specificity (Experiment 1) and the hormonal modulation (Experiment 2) of the cutaneous initiation of lordosis in 4- to 6-day-old male and female rats (infants) and in 60- to 90-day-old female rats ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · January 1, 1993 Full text Cite

The organizational effects of gonadal steroids on sexually dimorphic spatial ability.

Journal Article Psychoneuroendocrinology · January 1991 Numerous studies have provided evidence that both human and nonhuman males reliably outperform females on tasks that require spatial ability. Because most of the research on this topic has utilized hormonally normal adults as subjects, it is still not know ... Full text Cite

Cholesterol screening in the pediatric office.

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 1991 Cite

Organizational effects of early gonadal secretions on sexual differentiation in spatial memory.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · February 1990 Neonatally castrated (MNC) and control male rats (MC) and female rats treated neonatally with estradiol benzoate (FNE) and female controls (FC) were studied. In Exp. 1 spatial memory was assessed using a 12-arm radial maze. During acquisition, MC and FNE g ... Full text Cite

Organizational changes in cholinergic activity and enhanced visuospatial memory as a function of choline administered prenatally or postnatally or both.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · December 1989 This experiment was an examination of the effects of supplemental dietary choline chloride given prenatally (to the diet of pregnant rats) and postnatally (intubed directly into the stomachs of rat pups) on memory function and neurochemical measures of bra ... Full text Cite

Pre- and postnatal choline supplementation produces long-term facilitation of spatial memory.

Journal Article Developmental psychobiology · May 1988 Although research has demonstrated that short-term improvement in memory function of adult rats can occur when the availability of precursors for the neurotransmitter acetylcholine is increased, little is known about whether memory function of adult rats c ... Full text Cite

Steroids induce hypothalamic progestin receptors and facilitate female sexual behavior in neonatal rats.

Journal Article Brain research · May 1988 This report provides the first evidence that two activational actions of estrogen can occur within the first week of life in the rat. Priming 4-day-old rats with exogenous estradiol benzoate facilitates lordosis and ear wiggling-like behavior, and induces ... Full text Cite

Introduction

Journal Article Journal of Insect Physiology · January 1, 1988 Full text Cite

Brain transections differentially alter lordosis and ear wiggling of 6-day-old rats.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · December 1987 Six-day-old male and female rats display lordosis and ear wiggling in response to tactile stimulation of the flanks and rump, without priming by exogenous estrogen. The involvement of various brain regions in these behaviors, which resemble components of a ... Full text Cite

Estradiol benzoate facilitates lordosis and ear wiggling of 4- to 6-day-old rats.

Journal Article Behavioral neuroscience · October 1987 The effects of exogenous and endogenous steroids on components of female sexual behavior of neonatal male and female rats were investigated. In Experiment 1, 4-day-old rats were treated with 0, 0.1, 1.0, 10, or 100 micrograms/10 g body weight estradiol ben ... Full text Cite

Development of postglucoprivic insulin-induced suckling and feeding in rats.

Journal Article The American journal of physiology · July 1987 Increased food or milk intake in response to insulin-induced hypoglycemia cannot be demonstrated in the rat until pups reach weaning age. However, when food and suckling are withheld from insulin-treated 5- to 25-day-old rats until their altered blood gluc ... Full text Cite

Huddling and independent feeding of neonatal rats can be facilitated by a conditioned change in behavioral state.

Journal Article Developmental psychobiology · November 1986 Infant rat pups were exposed to a novel odor (orange or cedar) while they received tactile stimulation (stroking of the body) or were presented with odor or stroking alone. The effects of these treatments were assessed on pups' performance in a huddling te ... Full text Cite

Suckling Isn't Feeding, or Is It? A Search for Developmental Continuities

Journal Article Advances in the Study of Behavior · January 1, 1983 This chapter describes the suckling behavior of infant rats and some of the recently developed techniques used to study it. It provides a basis for discussion of the relationship between suckling and later ingestive behavior. It is assumed that at least tw ... Full text Cite

Activation and odor conditioning of suckling behavior in 3-day-old albino rats.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes · October 1982 The circumstances under which a novel odor could elicit nipple attachment behavior in 3-day-old albino rats were investigated. In Experiment 1, rats suckled washed nipples scented with citral (a lemon odor) only if they either had received tactile stimulat ... Full text Cite

Changing oral cues in suckling of weaning-age rats: Possible contributions to weaning

Journal Article Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology · June 1, 1980 Four experiments assessed the relative contribution of oral and nutritional stimuli in the control of suckling in 20- and 25-day-old Sprague-Dawley CD rat pups. Oral factors were critical to suckling satiety, since the initiation of a suckling bout in wean ... Full text Cite

Inhibition of suckling in weaning-age rats: a possible serotonergic mechanism.

Journal Article Journal of comparative and physiological psychology · June 1979 The nature, development, and specificity of serotonergic involvement in the control of suckling behavior in rat pups from 10 to 35 days of age were studied. During development, suckling normally declines after 10 days and is abandoned after 30 days. It was ... Full text Cite

Suckling behavior of the infant rat: modulation by a developing neurotransmitter system.

Journal Article Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior · March 1978 Drugs which alter serotonin receptor activity modified the suckling behavior of 20-day-old rat pups. Suckling could be reinstated in nondeprived pups, which normally do not suckle, by blockade of serotonin receptors with methysergide. Stimulation of serot ... Full text Cite

The effects of strain, reproductive condition, and strain of placenta donor on placentophagia in nonpregnan mice

Journal Article Physiological Psychology · 1973 The effects on placentophagia of strain, reproductive condition, and strain of placenta donor were observed in nonpregnant mice. Mice of the C57BL7/6By and BALB/cBy strains were exposed to placentas of either strain after either no previous parturitional e ... Cite