Intended Audience
The Neurosciences program welcomes Dr. Patrick Piantadosi ’10 a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Behavioral and Genomic Neuroscience of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. His topic is “Contributions of nucleus accumbens circuitry to aversively-motivated behaviors.”
The ability to inhibit or promote behavior in the presence of an aversive stimulus is an integral part of an organism’s behavioral repertoire. Although the neural circuitry necessary to modify behavior during threat has been well-described in limbic and cortical regions, comparatively less is known regarding how downstream regions in the ventral striatum contribute to action selection in aversive contexts. In this talk, Patrick will discuss a series of experiments suggesting that separate subregions of the nucleus accumbens, a major component of the ventral striatum, make partially-dissociable contributions to the inhibition and promotion of behavior induced by aversive stimuli.
Free and open to the public. This event may be used to satisfy the Lecture Reflection Requirement in PSYC 303, 490, & 493/494.