Modelling Basal-Ganglia contributions to motivational impairments in Parkinson's Disease

帕金森氏病的典型特征是由大脑中多巴胺的消耗引起的运动障碍。除了运动问题外，患者还经常遭受严重的和使人衰弱的动机障碍，如冷漠和疲劳。然而，与运动症状相比，PD中动机障碍的潜在机制知之甚少。该项目旨在更好地了解多巴胺系统不同部分的功能障碍如何构成不同类型的动机障碍，通过将计算和神经精神药理学的工具结合在一起。该项目将涉及六个月的学习大脑多巴胺系统的计算模型在诺丁汉教授马克汉弗莱斯的监督下。博士学位的其余部分将在伯明翰大学的动机和社会神经科学（www.MSN-lab.com）实验室中度过，并在Ned Jenkinson博士的监督下进行实验，使用健康成人的心理药理学实验测试计算模型的预测，并在帕金森病患者中进行测试。该项目将为学生提供计算神经科学，编程和实验方法的广泛培训，使他们能够在不断发展的计算神经学领域发展专业知识。

Parkinson's Disease is typically characterized as a movement disorder caused by a depletion in dopamine in the brain. Alongside movement problems, patients often suffer from severe and debilitating impairments to their levels of motivation, such as apathy and fatigue. However, compared to the motor symptoms, the mechanisms underlying motivation impairments in PD are poorly understood. This project aims to better understand how dysfunction in different parts of the dopamine system underlies different types of motivation impairments, by combining together the tools computational and neuropsychopharmacology. The project will involve six months learning computational models of the brains dopamine systems in Nottingham under the supervision of Prof. Mark Humphries. The remainder of the PhD will be spent at the University of Birmingham in the Motivation and Social Neuroscience (www.MSN-lab.com) lab of Dr. Apps aswell as under the supervision of Dr. Ned Jenkinson, conducting experiments that test predictions from computational models using psychopharmacological experiments in healthy adults, and testing in patients with Parkinson's Disease. This project will give students a broad training in computational neuroscience, programming and experimental methods, allowing them to develop expertise in the growing field of Computational Neurology.