Subcortical Reward Representation and Evaluation

The experience of a reward, such as the ingestion of food, is accompanied by dynamic patterns of neuronal activity across many brain regions. For example, reward ingestion is often accompanied by brief increases in spike activity by dopamine neurons, amygdala neurons, and neurons in the basal ganglia. I will discuss our approach to understanding the behavioral functions of this reward-elicited activity with a focus on reward signals that promote future reward seeking behavior.

Dr. Patricia Janak is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. William Hodos NACS Seminars are free and open to the public.