CNLM Colloquium Series

​When making a decision, we can use what we have learned about our actions and their outcomes to prospectively evaluate the consequences of our potential choices. This goal-directed strategy supports our agency. It allows us to choose actions that lead to desirable consequences and avoid those that lead to outcomes that are not currently beneficial. This strategy is, thus, highly flexible to changing circumstances. But we don't always think about the consequences of our behavior. Often this is fine. Such habits are a way for our brain to efficiently execute routine behaviors based on past success, without forethought of their consequences.

The brain balances goal-directed and habitual control to allow behavior to be adaptive when needed, yet efficient when appropriate. But disrupted goal-directed control and overreliance on habit can cause inadequate consideration of consequences, inflexible behavior, a lower threshold for compulsivity, and disrupted decision making. This can contribute to cognitive deficits in numerous psychiatric conditions. Chronic stress tips the balance of behavioral control towards habit. Stress can change how we learn and, thus, how we make decisions, promoting inflexible habits. I will discuss how dorsomedial striatal projection neuron subtypes organize their activity to support agency and the transition to habit and how chronic stress has opposing effects on central and basolateral amygdala inputs to the dorsomedial striatum to promote premature habit formation.