Jennifer Taylor

Jenny is interested in how the brain encodes multiple aspects of reward processing and movement. This basic science research helps understand how the brain organizes movements and how addictive drugs alter the incentive to obtain rewards. The results of her studies could help to understand some of the mechanisms that may contribute to drug addiction and movement disorders. Project 1: Environmental signals that predict the availability of reward must at some point be translated into movements to retrieve that reward. How the brain performs this task is not completely understood. We use electrophysiology to monitor neural activity in a region of the brain called the ventral pallidum. We look for alterations in the firing rates or number of responsive neurons at the onset of specific events during a behavioral task, such as particular movements or the presentation of cues that predict reward. We then study how stimulation of the mesolimbic circuit with an addictive drug modifies activity in the ventral pallidum during the same events. Project 2: The basal ganglia are a set of interconnected brain structures that are important for the higher level organization of individual movements. Such organization is disrupted in a number of neurological diseases, especially when there are alterations in dopamine function. We are currently examining how dopamine receptors contribute to the sequential organization of movements. More specifically, we examine the effects of dopaminergic compounds on the expression of a highly predictable grooming sequence that is referred to as a “grooming chain.”