Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Keyword
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Behavioral Neurobiology
The Role Of Dopamine In Decision Making Processes In Drosophila Melanogaster, Michelle C. Bowers
The Role Of Dopamine In Decision Making Processes In Drosophila Melanogaster, Michelle C. Bowers
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Understanding the neural processes that mediate decision making is a relatively new field of investigation in the scientific community. With the ultimate goal of understanding how humans decide between one path and another, simpler models such as Drosophila Melanogaster, the common fruit fly, are often utilized as a way of determining the neural circuits involved in these decision-making processes. One of the most important decisions flies make is the decision of where to lay their eggs (oviposit). Choosing the proper substrate upon which to lay eggs is a crucial decision that can ultimately impact their fecundity. This paper investigates the …
Experience-Dependent Changes In Nucleus Accumbens Activity Predict Cued Approach Learning: Contribution Of Nmda Receptors, Mercedes Vega Villar
Experience-Dependent Changes In Nucleus Accumbens Activity Predict Cued Approach Learning: Contribution Of Nmda Receptors, Mercedes Vega Villar
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Animals learn associations between environmental cues and the natural rewards they predict (e.g., food, water, sex). As a result, reward-predictive cues come to trigger vigorous reward-seeking responses. Many neurons in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) become excited upon presentation of an already-learned reward-predictive cue. These NAc responses encode the motivational value of the cue and are necessary for the expression of the subsequent approach behavior. However, the precise temporal relationship between the emergence of cue-evoked excitations in the NAc and the acquisition of cued approach behavior remains unknown. In Experiment 1, NAc activity was recorded as rats learned to approach a …