Assessing the role of corticostriatal interactions in appetitive and aversive conditioning- relevance to addiction and schizophrenia

哺乳动物的大脑能够处理和保留大量的新信息，通过在环境中的中性刺激与动机重要事件之间形成有意义的关系。一旦形成，这些联想（如记忆）就能对我们的思想、情绪、行动和决定产生强大的影响，有时甚至会导致行为的异常表现，如成瘾、精神分裂症或恐惧症。因此，至关重要的是，研究的方向是进一步了解大脑是如何组织的，以优化关联信息获取的调节，以及随后对行为输出的控制。 我提议的研究旨在阐明信息处理调节的神经和神经化学机制，这取决于大脑中两个记忆中心海马体和杏仁核的功能。许多研究表明，这些区域可以相互竞争或相互调节以控制行为，并且这种竞争在正常情况下可能受到多巴胺等神经调节剂的严格调节。我提出的工作将测试这样一个想法，即内侧前额叶皮层（参与执行功能）和腹侧纹状体（参与奖励和恐惧相关过程）与海马和杏仁核密切相关，形成不同的功能回路，这些回路在选择驱动奖励相关和恐惧相关行为的信息时有差异。

The mammalian brain is capable of processing and retaining a large amount of new information, by forming meaningful relationships between neutral stimuli in the environment with motivationally significant events. Once formed, these associations (as memories) can exert a powerful influence over our thoughts, emotions, actions, and decisions, sometimes to the extent that they can give rise to abnormal manifestations of behaviour, as seen in addiction, schizophrenia, or phobia. Thus, it is crucial that research is directed towards furthering our understanding of how the brain is organized to optimize the regulation of associative information acquisition, and its subsequent control over behavioural output. My proposed research seeks to elucidate the neural and neurochemical mechanisms that underlie the regulation of information processing which depends upon the function of two memory centres in the brain, the hippocampus and amygdala. Much research has indicated that these regions can compete, or modulate one another for control over behaviour and that this competition is kept under tight regulation in normal circumstances, possibly by neuromodulators such as dopamine. My proposed work will test the idea that discrete, interconnected regions within the medial prefrontal cortex (involved in executive functions), and the ventral striatum (involved in reward and fear-related processes) with which the hippocampus and amygdala are closely connected, form distinct functional loops that are differentially involved in the selection of information that drives reward-related and fear-related behaviour.