Motivational processing, Mesolimbic and Mesostriatal Function in Neuropsychiatric Disease

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Motivation and the response to rewarding events are adversely affected in many psychiatric and neurological illnesses: many patients with psychosis or Parkinson‘s Disease (PD) are de-motivated and experience apathy. Also, patients with some illnesses, such young adults with psychosis, seem to be over motivated by irrelevant information, which they seem to find captivating. This can also happen in patients with PD, possibly secondary to medication. But very little is known about the precise cause of these motivational abnormalities at the brain level. One reason is why few studies have even tried to investigate these processes in patients is because, until very recently, the techniques and methods to study brain motivational processes in patients were underdeveloped. Recent advances in (a) MRI brain imaging, and (b) basic understanding of reward and motivational processing, have meant that the time is now ripe to study how these processes are affected in psychiatric and neurological illness. I will study patients with psychosis, and PD, and examine to what extent their apathy and psychotic symptoms can be related to abnormalities in motivational and reward processing systems. Greater understanding will be helpful to patients, will enable better use of existing treatments and could help develop new treatments.