- How is pleasure generated in the brain?
- What are the neural bases of wanting and liking?
- How are rewards learned?
- How do brain motivation systems work?
- What causes addiction?
- How does the brain distinguish pleasant from unpleasant?
- How does fear relate to desire?
- Can an emotion ever be truly unconscious?
- How do brain movement systems influence higher psychological functions?
- How are complex streams of real behavior produced by brains?
- What does animal instinctive behavior have in common with human language?
Affective
neuroscience & biopsychology of liking & wanting, pleasure,
desire,
and incentive motivation
In our affective neuroscience laboratory we study brain systems of sensory
pleasure 'liking' and of incentive salience 'wanting'. Our research has
applications to human drug addiction, irrational choice, and conscious
and unconscious emotion involved in everyday pleasures and desires.
Action syntax,
executive brain systems, and neuroethology
We study neural command systems that control sequential
patterns of words, thoughts, and natural instinctive behaviors. All
share
brain striatal mechanisms of 'action syntax', a core function involved
in normal behavior, OCD and related pattern pathologies of thought and
action.
