🚨GIF THREAD ALERT🚨presenting our latest exploration on how “Distinct Medial Orbitofrontal–Striatal Circuits Support Dissociable Component Processes of Risk/Reward Decision-Making” by superstar student @_NicoleJenni in @SfNJournals #JNeurosci https://t.co/OF3zkdmHww

Complementary yet dissociable influences of medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex over cue-guided decisions involving reward magnitude and uncertainty

for anyone interested in the amygdala and risky decision-making, check out our new preprint: https://t.co/sRuIdwv4XX amygdala neurons track reward-seeking actions, and punishment risk dramatically alters this function. lots of other (BLA-accumbens!) data included.

Are you and your colleagues interested in creating a symposium for our IBNS conference in South Africa? Submissions are less than a month away and we would love to hear your work! Call for symposia deadline is October 28th https://t.co/unLselDmxe #IBNSSouthAfrica

@TheErinCalipari says her #MyWHY is: “because drug addiction is one of the biggest economic problems in our country. It kills more people than any other disease every year, and there is no cure for it.” @NIH funding supports her work on dopamine, trains scientists, and lays the

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I do miss him so...

https://t.co/ju2nc67kof

#JNeurosci: Findings from @_NicoleJenni @debrabercovici and @dr_stan provide novel insight into the functional contribution that mOFC–BLA and PL interactions make to distinct processes that shape decision-making in situations of reward uncertainty in rats https://t.co/3pKlJrOQF6

https://t.co/P0Iilfxn3g

Trends in Neurosciences Neuromodulatory signaling contributing to the encoding of aversion:

https://t.co/oyJegHhW6s

As always, thanks for reading (cross posted at the good place).

So, rather than prescribing specific functions to a frontal region, a more comprehensive understanding of how these regions guide behavior may be obtained by elucidating the information processed and behavioral impact of different subpopulations of cortical neurons

“This highlights that examining how distinct frontal lobe subcircuits regulate complex cognition can uncover novel functions that might not be revealed with more generalized disruption of cortical activity.”

What we found interesting was that none of our selective disruption of mOFC output circuits recapitulated the effect of inactivation of ALL mOFC outputs.

But pay attention to losses when odds are poor

We interpreted this to indicate this circuit promotes advantageous choice by processing information about wins and losses in a context-appropriate manner - shrug off a loss when the odds are good,

What was really cool was when we disrupted mOFC-to-prelimbic inputs. This induced more random choice patterns, so animals were less risky when the odds were good, and more risky when they were poor

In comparison, when we suppressed Prelimbic inputs to the mOFC, that made rats more risky, implying that this cortico-cortical circuit attenuates the allure of larger yet uncertain rewards and promotes loss sensitivity

In contrast, targeting ascending, BLA-to-mOFC circuits had no effect