Article
Neurosciences
Nicole L. Jenni, Nicola Symonds, Stan B. Floresco
Summary: This series of experiments examined the role of the medial subregion of the orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) in Pavlovian conditioned approach, conditioned reinforcement, extinction, and cue-induced reinstatement of food-seeking behavior. The results revealed that mOFC inactivation had varied effects on these behaviors.
PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Edmund T. Rolls, Zhuo Wan, Wei Cheng, Jianfeng Feng
Summary: This study analyzed the brain systems associated with risk-taking and validated the relationship between risk-taking and alcohol drinking, cannabis use, and anxious feelings. The findings indicated that the medial orbitofrontal cortex, involved in reward value and pleasure, is related to risk-taking. This research provides important insights into the understanding of the bases and mechanisms of risk-taking in humans.
Review
Biology
Kate M. Wassum
Summary: Adaptive reward-related decision making requires accurate consideration of the specific outcome and current desirability of each option. The basolateral amygdala (BLA) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) collaborate to encode and use detailed reward memories, supporting prediction and inference in decision making. BLA projections to lateral OFC encode outcome-specific reward memories, while projections to medial OFC regulate the use of these memories for reward pursuit decisions.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Kei Sakikawa, Yuri Masaoka, Motoyasu Honma, Akira Yoshikawa, Masaki Yoshida, Sawa Kamimura, Masahiro Ida, Hitome Kobayashi, Masahiko Izumizaki
Summary: This study investigated the relationship between olfactory abilities and brain activation in elderly individuals using fMRI. The results showed that the left amygdala had the greatest impact on olfactory detection and recognition, while the entorhinal cortex, parahippocampus, and hippocampus supported amygdala activation. Functional decline in the entorhinal cortex and parahippocampus crucially impacted olfactory recognition, which could be compensated for by amygdala function through connections with frontal regions.
BRAIN AND BEHAVIOR
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Merridee J. Lefner, Alexa P. Magnon, James M. Gutierrez, Matthew R. Lopez, Matthew J. Wanat
Summary: This study investigates the impact of temporal delays on reward preference by examining rats' preference for different flavored rewards during a free-feeding test, finding that temporal delays enhance preference for initially less desirable rewards.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Chao Xie, Tianye Jia, Edmund T. Rolls, Trevor W. Robbins, Barbara J. Sahakian, Jie Zhang, Zhaowen Liu, Wei Cheng, Qiang Luo, Chun-Yi Zac Lo, He Wang, Tobias Banaschewski, Gareth J. Barker, Arun L. W. Bokde, Christian Buechel, Erin Burke Quinlan, Sylvane Desrivieres, Herta Flor, Antoine Grigis, Hugh Garavan, Penny Gowland, Andreas Heinz, Sarah Hohmann, Bernd Ittermann, Jean-Luc Martinot, Marie-Laure Paillere Martinot, Frauke Nees, Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos, Tomas Paus, Luise Poustka, Juliane H. Froehner, Michael N. Smolka, Henrik Walter, Robert Whelan, Gunter Schumann, Jianfeng Feng
Summary: The study found that the medial OFC exhibited graded activation increases to reward while the lateral OFC had graded activation increases to nonreward. Both medial and lateral OFC activations were associated with concurrent depressive symptoms at ages 14 and 19. In a longitudinal design, it was found that greater sensitivity to nonreward of the lateral OFC at age 14 predicted high depressive symptom severity at age 19.
BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY-COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND NEUROIMAGING
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Kenta Kimura, Noriaki Kanayama, Asako Toyama, Kentaro Katahira
Summary: This study investigates the influence of the cardiac cycle on instrumental reward learning and finds that the fluctuations in cardiac afferent signals can affect asymmetric value updating in instrumental reward learning.
FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Daniela J. Palombo, Virginie M. Patt, Renee Hunsberger, Mieke Verfaellie
Summary: A prevailing view in cognitive neuroscience suggests that different forms of learning are mediated by dissociable memory systems; however, growing evidence suggests that the hippocampus may also be important for trial-and-error learning, particularly value or reward-based learning. The study found that patients with hippocampal damage were significantly impaired in a learning task, indicating a role of the hippocampus beyond episodic memory tasks.
Article
Cell Biology
Hua Tang, Vincent D. Costa, Ramon Bartolo, Bruno B. Averbeck
Summary: This study examines the activity of ventral and dorsal corticostriatal circuits in supporting goal-directed behavior. The amygdala, ventral striatum, orbitofrontal cortex, and lateral prefrontal cortex were analyzed while monkeys performed a task. The results suggest that information about stimuli and their value is encoded in the amygdala before options are presented and this information is passed to the LPFC for action execution. The ventral circuit maintains learned value information while the dorsal circuit is involved in action selection.
Article
Neurosciences
Maia S. Pujara, Nicole K. Ciesinski, Joseph F. Reyelts, Sarah E. V. Rhodes, Elisabeth A. Murray
Summary: This study found that the functional interaction between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex is crucial for supporting social and nonsocial valuation. Different regions of the prefrontal cortex exhibit distinct deficits when impaired.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Guang-Wei Zhang, Li Shen, Can Tao, A-Hyun Jung, Bo Peng, Zhong Li, Li Zhang, Huizhong Whit Tao
Summary: Research has found that anxiogenic stressors can elicit acute and prolonged responses in glutamatergic neurons of the mouse medial preoptic area, affecting the induction and expression of anxiety-like behaviors and the production of anxiolytic effects. These neurons interact to play important roles in coordinating emotional state and social behavior.
NATURE NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
Huw Jarvis, Isabelle Stevenson, Amy Q. Huynh, Emily Babbage, James Coxon, Trevor T. -J. Chong
Summary: Recent research suggests that the act of investing effort may influence learning. This study tested whether effort modulates teaching signals in a reinforcement learning paradigm. The results showed that effort resulted in more efficient learning from positive outcomes and less efficient learning from negative outcomes. Interestingly, this effect varied across individuals and was more pronounced in those who were more averse to investing effort in the first place. These findings highlight the importance of motivational factors in a common framework of reward-based learning, integrating the computational principles of reinforcement learning with those of value-based decision-making.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Biology
Ana C. Sias, Ashleigh K. Morse, Sherry Wang, Venuz Y. Greenfield, Caitlin M. Goodpaster, Tyler M. Wrenn, Andrew M. Wikenheiser, Sandra M. Holley, Carlos Cepeda, Michael S. Levine, Kate M. Wassum
Summary: The study found that the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is crucial for encoding sensory-specific stimulus-outcome memories during the learning process and influencing reward choices. Direct input from the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) supports the BLA in this function, and the pathways between them regulate the encoding and subsequent use of sensory-specific reward memories that are essential for adaptive, appetitive decision making.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Ahmad Terra, Rafia Inam, Elena Fersman
Summary: This study proposes a novel method to connect explanations from both input and output ends of a black-box model, resulting in fine-grained explanations. The method exposes reward prioritization to the user, generating different levels of explanation and allowing RL agent reconfigurations. The effectiveness of the method is verified through experiments, detailing input features' contributions to rewards and biases of reward components.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Ziyun Zhou, Jingwei Shang, Yimang Li
Summary: Hierarchical reinforcement learning (HRL) offers a hierarchical structure for organizing tasks, enabling agents to learn and make decisions autonomously in complex environments. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to enhance HRL performance through topologically sorted potential calculation for reward machines. The results showcase the superiority of our proposed method over traditional HRL techniques and reward machine-based reinforcement learning approaches in terms of learning efficiency and overall task performance.
Editorial Material
Psychology, Biological
Daniele Ortu
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES
(2015)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Manish Vaidya, Caleb D. Hudgins, Daniele Ortu
BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES
(2015)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Daniele Ortu, Kevin Allan, David I. Donaldson
Editorial Material
Behavioral Sciences
Daniele Ortu, Ida M. Skavhaug, Manish Vaidya
FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
(2013)
Editorial Material
Behavioral Sciences
Daniele Ortu, Manish Vaidya
FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
(2013)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Daniele Ortu, Manish Vaidya
BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES
(2020)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Daniele Ortu, Ryan M. Bugg
Summary: Response systems can be understood as interactions between behavior topographies that are constrained by currently present stimuli and a history of reinforcement. New response systems can develop during an organism's lifetime, with competition and resolution occurring at the striatum-thalamo-cortical loops level.
FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Clinical
Daniele Ortu, Traci M. Cihon
PERSPECTIVES ON BEHAVIOR SCIENCE
(2019)
Article
Psychology, Clinical
Daniele Ortu, Manish Vaidya
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Daniele Ortu, April M. Becker, Thomas A. R. Woelz, Sigrid S. Glenn
REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE PSICOLOGIA
(2012)
Article
Psychology, Clinical
Daniele Ortu
Article
Neurosciences
Yang He, Jun Tang, Meng Zhang, Junjie Ying, Dezhi Mu
Summary: This study investigated the protective effects and mechanisms of human placenta derived mesenchymal stem cells (hPMSCs) transplantation in a rat model of hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE). The results showed that hPMSCs transplantation reduced apoptosis and improved long-term neurological prognosis. Furthermore, the downregulation of Sema 3A/NRP-1 expression and activation of the PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway played a key role in the protective effects of hPMSCs.
Article
Neurosciences
Emily L. Isenstein, Edward G. Freedman, Jiayi Xu, Ian A. DeAndrea-Lazarus, John J. Foxe
Summary: This study evaluated electrophysiological discrimination of parametric somatosensory stimuli in healthy young adults to understand how the brain processes the duration of tactile information. The results showed that participants did not electrophysiologically discriminate between 100 and 115 ms, but they exhibited distinct electrophysiological responses when the deviant stimuli were 130, 145, and 160 ms. These findings contribute to a better understanding of tactile sensitivity in different clinical conditions.
Article
Neurosciences
Juliana R. Souza, Ludmila Lima-Silveira, Daniela Accorsi-Mendonca, Benedito H. Machado
Summary: This study demonstrates that A2A receptors play a crucial role in modulating synaptic transmission in the NTS neurons and are required for the enhancement of glutamatergic transmission observed under short-term sustained hypoxia conditions.
Article
Neurosciences
Miki Hashizume, Rina Ito, Rie Suge, Yasushi Hojo, Gen Murakami, Takayuki Murakoshi
Summary: The basolateral amygdaloid complex (BLA) is closely involved in the formation of emotional memories, including both aversive memory and contextual fear memory. Acute sleep deprivation (SD) disrupts the acquisition of tone-associated fear memory in juvenile rats, but has no significant effect on contextual fear memory. Slow network oscillation in the amygdala contributes to the formation of amygdala-dependent fear memory in relation to sleep.
Article
Neurosciences
Qunxian Wang, Shipeng Guo, Dongjie Hu, Xiangjun Dong, Zijun Meng, Yanshuang Jiang, Zijuan Feng, Weihui Zhou, Weihong Song
Summary: GSDME plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease by regulating the switch from apoptosis to pyroptosis and participating in neuroinflammatory response. Knockdown of GSDME has been shown to improve cognitive impairments, indicating that GSDME could be a therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease.