Université de Fribourg

Striatal responsiveness to reward under threat‐of‐shock and working memory load : A preliminary study

Gaillard, Claudie ; Guillod, Matthias ; Ernst, Monique ; Torrisi, Salvatore ; Federspiel, Andrea ; Schoebi, Dominik ; Recabarren, Romina E. ; Ouyang, Xinyi ; Mueller-Pfeiffer, Christoph ; Horsch, Antje ; Homan, Philipp ; Wiest, Roland ; Hasler, Gregor ; Martin-Soelch, Chantal

In: Brain and Behavior, 2019, no. 9, p. 1-21

Introduction: Reward and stress are important determinants of motivated behaviors. Striatal regions play a crucial role in both motivation and hedonic processes. So far, little is known on how cognitive effort interacts with stress to modulate reward processes. This study examines how cognitive effort (load) interacts with an unpredictable acute stressor (threat-of-shock) to modulate motivational...

Université de Fribourg

Four individually identified paired dopamine neurons signal reward in larval Drosophila

Rohwedder, Astrid ; Wenz, Nana L. ; Stehle, Bernhard ; Huser, Annina ; Yamagata, Nobuhiro ; Zlatic, Marta ; Truman, James W. ; Tanimoto, Hiromu ; Saumweber, Timo ; Gerber, Bertram ; Thum, Andreas S.

In: Current Biology, 2016, vol. 26, no. 5, p. 661–669

Dopaminergic neurons serve multiple functions, including reinforcement processing during associative learning [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12]. It is thus warranted to understand which dopaminergic neurons mediate which function. We study larval Drosophila, in which only approximately 120 of a total of 10,000 neurons are dopaminergic, as judged by the expression of tyrosine...

Université de Fribourg

Neuropeptide F neurons modulate sugar reward during associative olfactory learning of Drosophila larvae

Rohwedder, Astrid ; Selcho, Mareike ; Chassot, Bérénice ; Thum, Andreas S.

In: Journal of Comparative Neurology, 2015, vol. 523, no. 18, p. 2637–2664

All organisms continuously have to adapt their behavior according to changes in the environment in order to survive. Experience-driven changes in behavior are usually mediated and maintained by modifications in signaling within defined brain circuits. Given the simplicity of the larval brain of Drosophila and its experimental accessibility on the genetic and behavioral level, we analyzed if...