Title

Neural mechanisms of reward-guided decision-making and affect 

Bio

My background is in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience and have made an impact on our understanding of how anatomically distinct parts of prefrontal cortex control affective behavior. My research is focused on determining the functions of the prefrontal cortex and limbic system in both health and disease. To do this my group at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai takes a multidisciplinary approach combining behavioral, imaging, electrophysiology, molecular, and anatomical methodologies in rhesus macaques.

Abstract

How do decide what to pursue? How do the outcomes of our choices influence our emotional state? In our daily lives, our brains are constantly having to learn and update the costs and benefits associated with different available courses of action in order to guide our decisions and control our affective state. In the first part of my seminar, I will discuss work where we have investigated how the brain computes the costs and benefits of different options based on the probability and type of outcomes that can be received. Using a combination of functional neuroimaging, pathway-specific chemogenetics, and neural recordings in macaques, this work has pin-pointed two parts of the prefrontal cortex, the ventrolateral and orbital prefrontal cortex, and their connections with the amygdala as being critical for these functions. In the second part of my seminar, I will detail a series of experiments where we have investigated the functions of the subcallosal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area that is heavily implicated in the pathophysiology of depression. In this work we show that the subcallosal ACC signals rewards with temporally specific codes and deep brain stimulation of this area modulates brain-wide circuits that control affect. This work has begun to reveal the specific brain circuits and mechanisms involved in decision-making and affect.