Anatomy and Cell Biology 4451F/G Lecture 7: Lecture 7 - Reward and Decision Making
9 Jan 2019
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Document Summary
Describe some of the behavioural tasks used to model real-world decision making in human and non- human subjects. Describe how reversal learning, prediction error signaling and reinforcement value encoding support decision making: how these basic components support more complex real world decision making. Define temporal discounting: started in economics now used in neuroscience and frontotemporal dementia. Describe how decision making studies have been applied to further the understanding of addiction. Structure critical in reward related learning and the experience of reward = vta (central tegmental area: starting point, area rich in dopamergic neurons, heavily implicated with reward and addiction processing. Starts in the mesencephalon (midbrain) and projects to the cortex (pre-frontal: yellow, vta prefrontal cortex. Involved in reward and coding, but since it involves the cortex it is involved in sophisticated reward processing that goes on in the human brain: pre-frontal cortex allows us to encode reward flexibility and involved in motivation.
