My research is directed towards understanding the neural and psychological interface between motivation and cognition,- or how rewarding stimuli influence learning. My working hypothesis is that goal directed behaviours and cognitive processes (such as learning, memory and attention), as part of a dynamic interactive system, reciprocally modulate each other. In order to investigate these process, I have adopted two complementary approaches in my work. The first is a theoretical overview of the interaction between motivation and cognition that examines how reward-related learning is manifested in behaviour. The second is an examination of specific neural systems which may mediate the cognitive-motivational interface. The majority of my research focuses on animal models of drug addiction as this disorder is characterized by a breakdown in the 'normal' balance between motivation and cognition. In our lab, we investigate neural and psychological processes underlying drug addiction using a combination of neural and behavioural techniques. These include multiple measures of reward (conditioned place preference, self-administration, intracranial self-stimulation), analgesia (tail flick and formalin tests), memory (radial arm maze, open field foraging), motivation (sucrose consumption, transmission of food preference) and impulsivity (delay discounting, go/no-go, risk-taking) to name a few. Neural measures include post-mortem assessment of neurotoxin lesions, intracranial drug injections, electrophysiological recordings, long-term potentiation, corticosterone assays, and receptor binding autoradiography.

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