| | Principal Investigators
| Bruno Averbeck, Ph.D. |
 |
Dr. Averbeck attained a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1994. After working 3 years in industry, Dr. Averbeck returned to the University of Minnesota and completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2001, working in the lab of Dr. Apostolos Georgopoulos. His thesis was titled, "Neural Mechanisms of Copying Geometrical Shapes". Following his thesis work, Dr. Averbeck carried out post-doctoral studies at the University of Rochester with Dr. Daeyeol Lee. During this period he studied neural mechanisms underlying sequential learning, coding of vocalizations and population coding. In 2006 Dr. Averbeck moved to University College London as a senior Lecturer, where he began experiments looking at the role of frontal-striatal circuits in learning, combining neurophysiology, brain imaging and patient studies. In 2009, Dr. Averbeck moved to the NIMH and established the Unit on Learning and Decision Making in the Laboratory of Neuropsychology. |
| Research Interests |
| The
work in Dr. Averbeck's
group focuses on understanding the role of frontal-striatal circuits,
and particularly the role of dopamine in these circuits, on learning
and the representation of beliefs. The lab pursues these questions
by establishing links between network dynamics at the level of
neuronal ensembles and behaviour. The overall strategy of the
work in the lab is to carry out experiments in patient groups
that have disordered dopamine signalling, including patients with
schizophrenia and patients with Parkinson's disease. Specific
behaviors that are affected in the patient groups can then be
implemented in primate models, where in-vivo experiments allow
detailed examination of mechanism. For example, recent work has
examined the possibility that delusions in schizophrenia are driven
by a change in the way evidence is gathered to support beliefs
about the state of the world. Work by our group and others has
shown that patients with schizophrenia make decisions after gathering
less evidence than control groups. Recent work in the lab has
examined this behavior in healthy human subjects using functional
neuroimaging, and identified a network of areas that are involved
in the task, including the intraparietal sulcus, the insula and
the ventral striatum. Subsequent experiments in monkeys will follow
up these findings by examining the effects of pharmacological
manipulations which are thought to model psychosis, on behavior
and neural ensemble activity within the brain areas uncovered
by the functional imaging. |
| Representative Selected Recent Publications: |
- Djamshidian, A., O’Sullivan,
S.S., Doherty, K.,
Lees, A.J., and
Averbeck, B.
B.: Altruistic punishment inpatients with Parkinson’s
disease with
and without
impulsive behavior. Neuropsychologia,
49:103-107,
2011. (View)
- Evans, S., Fleming, S.F., Dolan,
R., and Averbeck,
B.B.: Effects of emotional preferences
on value-based decision
making are
mediated by mentalizing not reward networks. J
Cog Neuro,
Sep;23(9):2197-210,
(View)
- Averbeck, B. B., Evans, S., Chouhan, V., Bristow, E., and Shergill, S. S.:
Probabilistic learning and inference in schizophrenia, Schizophrenia Research, Apr;127(1-3):115-22, 2011. (View)
- Evans, S. Shergill, S.S. and
Averbeck, B. B.: Oxytocin decreases aversion to
angry faces in a
decision making task. Neuropsychopharmacology,
35:2502-2509, 2010. (View)
- Djamshidian, A., Jha, A., O’Sullivan, S. S., Silveira-Moriyama, L., Jacobson, C.,
Brown, P., Lees, A. and Averbeck, B. B.: Risk and learning in impulsive and non-impulsive patients with Parkinson’s disease. Movement
Disorders,
25:2203-2210, 2010. (View)
|
|
|
|
|
