About
I am a PhD candidate in the Brain & Behavior area and my interests are in using a computational approach to understand the role neuromodulators and neurohormones play in shaping our behavior. I integrate behavioral testing, hormone tracking and administration with in vivo monitoring of neurotransmitter release to better understand the neural circuitry behind motivation and reward. My dissertation work centers around the effect of oxytocin on dopamine release in the dorsal striatum.
Oxytocin, often reffered to as the 'love hormone', famously induces pro-social effects. It promotes social bonding, social recognition, and is necessary for maternal care of juvenilles. However, less well known is the seemingly contradictory anti-social effects of oxytocin. It can decrease trust, reduce social helping behavior, and increase aggressive behavior to strangers. There are effects beyond just social behavior that can be modified by this single peptide hormone. It can change stress hormone levels, reduce motivation for addictive substances and change how we assess risk. Oxytocin does more than just change how we interract with other people, it changes how we to interract with the world around us.
The neuromodulator dopamine is the central molucule controlling how we learn what we want. Since oxytocin changes how we interact with different stimuli we encounter in the world, it necessarily must interact with dopamine release in the motivation centers of the brain. The striatum is the key integrator of many cortical regions of the brain controlling decision making, emotions, and somatosensation. The dorsal striatum, known as the caudate and putamen in humans, is a dopaminergic region related to goal-oriented, habitual, and motor selection behavior. Much less is known about the role this region plays in motivated behavior compared to the ventral striatum, the nucleus accumbens. It is nontheless essential in affective processing, motor planning and decision making and is implicated in numerous related diseases and disorders such as Parkinson's disease, scizophrenia, and ASD. It is also highly heterogenenous between sexes and species in its receptor composition.
Using a combined computational and behavior neuroscience approach, I study how oxytocin modulates dopamine release in the rat (Rattus norvegicus) dorsal striatum in response to social and non-social stimuli.
