CNLM Virtual Colloquium Series

Frontocortical circuits in reward
learning and choice under uncertainty

Alicia Izquierdo Headshot

Tuesday, March 9, 2021
11 a.m. - 12 p.m. PST

Alicia Izquierdo, Ph.D.
Professor, Behavioral Neuroscience Area
Department of Psychology
UCLA

Those who register will receive an email with information on accessing the Zoom meeting the morning of the event. Sign up for other talks on our website:

cnlm.uci.edu/colloquium-series

 

Event Description:

Orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) have been assigned various overlapping roles ranging from learning and responding to reward, signaling value and uncertainty, and supporting economic decisions, to name a few. Both of these regions share reciprocal anatomical connections with basolateral amygdala, and not surprisingly, there is a great deal of functional similarity among these circuits. Using a combination of novel behavioral paradigms, DREADDs, and calcium imaging in freely-moving rats, our lab has sought better resolution of these diverse frontocortical processes. In this talk I will present data comparing OFC and ACC, together with basolateral amygdala, in flexible reward learning under uncertainty. Our results suggest highly overlapping, less specialized, roles for ACC and OFC in learning under uncertainty that point to complementary roles in keeping track of outcomes over repeated experience. Our more recent data will be discussed with an eye toward similarities in ACC and OFC function across cognitive domains, from perceptual to value- based decisions. Collectively these findings may have implications for how we view frontocortical contributions in flexible learning and value-based decision making across rodent and primate species.

Invite Your Colleagues

This year, we are opening up registration for the CNLM Colloquium Series to researchers from the broader learning and memory scientific community.