Research StrategyWhat's the picture at right?

Our laboratory exploits the microstructure of natural behavior to discover new truths about brain and psychology, instinctive behavior and affective reactions. Natural affective reactions and instinctive behaviors provide windows into controls of sensory pleasure, fear, or executive action syntax functions. Combined with conventional behavioral neuroscience techniques (instrumental & classical conditioning) and neuroscience techniques for manipulating brain function (painless drug microinjections), we explore how brain systems generate psychological processes.

Research Techniques

Behavioral Microstructure - Much research in our laboratory involves detailed videoanalyses of the microstructure of natural or instinctive behavioral patterns. We are best known for our affective neuroscience studies of brain 'liking' systems using the affective taste reactivity technique. Taste reactivity measures the microstructure of facial affective expressions to taste sensory pleasure, which in rodents, primates, & humans all derive from the same ancestral mechanisms. Similarly, to study the brain bases of action syntax we have developed microstructural measures of syntactic grooming chains. We also use conventional rodent instrumental and classical conditioning procedures, place preference tests, and other traditional behavioral neuroscience techniques. 

Neuroscience manipulations - We use several neuroscience techniques that selectively alter a single neural system in the brain. For example, to pinpoint sites of brain neurochemical circuits, we use painless brain microinjections to place drugs into a selected brain region. We also sometimes histological techniques such as Fos plume maps to measure the neuronal activation caused by microinjected drugs. Finally we study how the firing patterns of brain neurons code ‘liking’, ‘wanting’, and action syntax functions in collaborative studies with Prof. J. Wayne Aldridge’s laboratory [Neurology & Psychology].
Psychological theory - We aim to better understand fundamental psychological questions. How is pleasure caused in the brain? What is the nature of wanting and liking? How do rewards shape incentive motivation and behavior? How does the brain code the difference between positive affect and negative affect? How does fear relate to desire? What does instinctive behavior have in common with human language? How are complex streams of real behavior produced by a brain? We believe that psychological theory illuminates the meaning of neuroscience data, and that in turn neuroscience studies can be used to develop psychological insights. Our combination of affective neuroscience and biopsychology techniques with appropriate psychological theory helps us find better answers to these fundamental questions.
Ethical testing - Our research uses painless behavioral testing procedures for all our animal subjects to avoid significant suffering. All neuroscience manipulations (used only for rat and mouse studies) are conducted painlessly or under appropriate anesthesia. Our behavioral tests of reward and pleasure are not painful. Whenever our research collaborations involve human subjects the studies are carried out by experts who specialize in those studies. All research techniques used in the laboratory have been approved by the appropriate ethical review boards within the university and by US federal grant agencies (National Institutes of Health & National Science Foundation).