The role of the striatum in aversive learning and aversive prediction errors.

Neuroeconomic studies of decision making have emphasized reward learning as critical in the representation of value-driven choice behaviour. However, it is readily apparent that punishment and aversive learning are also significant factors in…

To make sound economic decisions, the brain needs to compute several different value-related signals. These include goal values that measure the predicted reward that results from the outcome generated by each of the actions under consideration,…

The role of the brain 5-HT1A receptor in cognition was examined in the water maze (WM) and passive avoidance (PA) tasks in the male rat. Pre-training administration of the 5-HT1A receptor agonist 8-OH-DPAT impaired WM performance and facilitated PA…

To investigate the functional role of the striatum in visuo-motor adaptation, we extend the DIRECT-model for visuo-motor reaching movements formulated by Bullock et al.(J Cogn Neurosci 5:408-435,1993) through two parallel loops, each modeling a…

Elevated plasma corticosterone during stressful events is linked to rapid changes in behavior in vertebrates and can mediate learning and memory consolidation. We tested the importance of acute corticosterone elevation in aversive learning of a…

Background: Biogenic amines are implicated in reinforcing associative learning. Octopamine (OA) is considered the invertebrate counterpart of noradrenaline and several studies in insects converge on the idea that OA mediates the reward in appetitive…

Experimental evidence is reviewed for the implication in aversive learning of the catecholamines, in particular noradrenaline and dopamine and the pituitary-adrenocortical system, in particular adrenocorticotrophic hormone and corticosterone.…

Previous research has posited striatal involvement in implicit learning. However, imaging studies have not directly compared learners with non-learners. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with 15 study participants, we used an implicit…

Background: Stopping a manual response requires suppression of the primary motor cortex (M1) and has been linked to activation of the striatum. Here, we test three hypotheses regarding the role of the striatum in stopping: striatum activation during…

The habituation to intense acoustic stimuli and the acquisition of differentially conditioned fear were assessed in 53 clinically anxious and 30 non-anxious control children and young adolescents. Anxious children tended to show larger electrodermal…