Posted in Basal Ganglia, RARB, Striatum, tagged Ann Graybiel, Basal Ganglia, Brain, Cognition, Development, Dopamine, Mental health, Neural network, Psychology, schizophrenia, self, self awareness, Striatum on February 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
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Everyone has a birthday right. Its the day you (your infant self) popped into the world and started breathing, right? But what about the day “you” were born – that is – “you” in the more philosophical, Jungian, spiritual, social, etc. kind of a way when you became aware of being in some [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, Brain, Cognition, connectome, default network, Development, DNA, Dopamine, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Genetics, Memory, Mental health, Prefrontal cortex, Psychology, resting state network on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
DON’T tell the grant funding agencies, but, in at least one way, the effort to relate genetic variation to individual differences in cognitive function is a totally intractable waste of money.
Let’s say we ask a population of folks to perform a task – perhaps a word memory task – and then we use neuroimaging to [...]
Posted in ADRA2A, Frontal cortex, Noradrenaline, Parietal cortex, TH, tagged 23andMe, Brain, Dopamine, Electroencephalography, ERP, Frontal lobe, Genetic testing, ICA, Independent Component Analysis, Literacy, Noradrenaline, Perception, Psychology, Reading, Signal transduction, Single-nucleotide polymorphism on October 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This year, my 5 year-old son and I have passed many afternoons sitting on the living room rug learning to read. While he ever so gradually learns to decode words, eg. “C-A-T” sound by sound, letter by letter – I can’t help but marvel at the human brain and wonder what is going on inside. [...]
Posted in 5HTT, Dopamine, Noradrenaline, acetylcholine, tagged Artificial Intelligence, Computation, Depression, Dopamine, Machine learning, Memory, Neural network, Neuromodulator, Research Groups on September 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
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pointer to: Computational Models of Basal Ganglia Function where Kenji Doya provides computational explanations for neuromodulators and their role in reinforcement learning. In his words, “Dopamine encodes the temporal difference error — the reward learning signal. Acetylcholine affects learning rate through memory updates of actions and rewards. Noradrenaline controls width [...]
Posted in COMT, DARPP32, DRD2, Uncategorized, tagged Artificial Intelligence, Basal Ganglia, Brown University, Cognition, Cognitive science, Dopamine, economics, interviews, podcasts, Working memory on August 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
If you’re interested in the neurobiology of learning and decision making, then you might be interested in this brief interview with Professor Michael Frank who runs the Laboratory of Neural Computation and Cognition at Brown University.
From his lab’s website: “Our research combines computational modeling and experimental work to understand the neural mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning, [...]
Posted in NURR1, tagged Dopamine, Epigenetics on July 10, 2009 | 1 Comment »
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Yesterday, there were some grumblings on the nomination of Francis Collins to the head of NIH. Some folks feel that the genome-wide, genome-everything approach to medicine has somewhat over-promised and under-delivered in its promise to elucidate the molecular pathways of human disease. In the field of mental health, the whole-genome era is just [...]
Posted in COMT, Cingulate cortex, Dopamine, tagged 23andMe, Dopamine, economics, Frontal lobe on September 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
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Amidst the current economic panic, I’m feeling more shocked than usual when listening to the flip-flopping, falsehoods, fabrications, backstepping, about-facing and unabashed spin-doctoring spewing forth from the news media. If watched long enough, one may even develop empathy for Henry Paulson who carries the weight of the global economy [...]
Posted in Dopamine, Striatum, tagged Dopamine, Neuroeconomics on September 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
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You see a masterpiece while I see splatters of paint on a canvas. Why – in neural terms – do we see the same painting and feel so subjectively different ?
Understanding the neural crosstalk between visual inputs (the raw neural activity generated in the retina) and our complex internal states (needs, [...]
Posted in COMT, DLPFC, Dopamine, Frontal cortex, Orbitofrontal cortex, Parahippocampal gyrus, Posterior parietal cortex, tagged 23andMe, Dopamine, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging on January 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Holiday time is full of all things delicious and fattening. Should I have a little chocolate now, or wait till later and have a bigger dessert ? Of course, this is not a real forced choice (in my case, the answer too often seems – alas – “I’ll have both!”), but there [...]
Posted in G-protein, GPR6, Striatum, tagged Addiction, B.F. Skinner, Basal Ganglia, Cognition, Dopamine, Genetics, inhibition, Neuron, Operant conditioning on November 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
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I’m not sure what Skinner would have thought, but its clear that, nowadays, mechanisms of behavior can be understood in terms of dynamic changes in neural systems and, furthermore, that individual differences in these neural dynamics are heavily regulated by genetic variation. Consider the recent paper by Lobo et al., “Genetic [...]
Posted in COMT, DARPP32, DRD2, Dopamine, tagged Addiction, Dopamine, Frontal lobe on September 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia To go out tonight or stay home? Hillary or Barack? Curly fries or onion rings? How do I make these important choices and why will others decide differently? Although there are many reasons for not stressing-out and over-thinking one’s decisions (except for really important choices like curly fry [...]
