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Tag: "reward" at biology news

Alcohol's effects on gene expression in the central nervous system

...gest that alcohol can produce changes in the brain reward system that can further increase the rewarding effects of alcohol." # Microarray techniques confirmed earlier reports indicating that chronic alcohol exposure/withdrawal differentially alters gene expression in the prefrontal cortex of mice. More th...

Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive

...romantic love may have more to do with motivation, reward and "drive" aspects of human behavior than with th...enetic consequences." Diverse emotions occur, but reward response primary "It's a stark reminder that the mind truly is in the brain," noted Lucy L. Brown o...

Potential Drug Target For Treating Cocaine Abuse Found

...s sent from one neuron to another within the brain reward system. Dopamine signals pleasure and reward by binding to receptors on the receiving neurons, after which it is reabsorbed for later use by a pr...

Brain Scan Study of Smokers Reveals Signature of Craving

...kers' brain responses in attention, motivation and reward regions after a period of overnight abstinence from smoking and after smoking as usual. While their brains were scanned, smokers saw smoking-related pictures and pictures of everyday people and objects, such as a stapler or door knob. The researchers...

Bees, Brains and Addiction

...ormation coming from the senses predicts the sugar reward and signaling to the muscles to take the appropria...ee assimilates and responds to information about a reward can be then applied to studies of how humans make decisions about rewards. And predictions from comp...

New clue to cocaine addicts' quirky behavior

...region in the limbic system involved in processing reward behavior. The prefrontal cortex is involved in processing information, and the hippocampus is involved in learning and memory. The connections to the nucleus accumbens seem to be bidirectional, said the researchers, and the interactions with the pre...

Nicotine triggers the same brain reward circuitry as opiates

...opiate receptors, but activates the natural opioid reward pathway in the brain. The researchers, led by Jul...alled CREB--known to control genes involved in the reward pathway of opiates and other abused drugs. They found that not only was CREB activated in the reward...

Gambling monkeys give insight into neural machinery of risk

...e "safe" target light yielded the same fruit juice reward each time. However, looking at the "risky" target ... larger or smaller juice reward. The average juice reward delivered by looking at either target was the same. To their surprise, the monkeys overwhelmingly p...

Investigating 'brain shrinkage' in alcoholics

...ctive substances is that they provide an immediate reward in the intoxicating experience. When actively drinking, an individual's inhibition processes become impaired and can further contribute to poor decisions and excessive drinking. With prolonged bouts of drinking, dependence may ensue along with neural...

Cultural norms not unique to human societies

...cial bond with other group members than the simple reward of freeing the food." A characteristic traditionally thought to be solely human, the propensity to conform, may be part of an evolutionary progression. "These results suggest an ancient origin for the cultural conformism that is so evident in humans...

Gene controlling circadian rhythms linked to drug addiction

...ity, it may also be a key regulator of the brain's reward system. UT Southwestern researchers showed that, in mice, the Clock gene regulates the reward response to cocaine, suggesting that similar actions take place in humans. Findings from the multi-c...

Nose odors and mouth odors: The brain distinguishes

...d by retronasal stimulation creates a differential reward context for food but not for non-food odors by signaling availability versus receipt of food," they concluded. "Because the current study tested only one food, future experiments are needed to determine whether other food odors produce the same diffe...

Monkeys understand numbers across senses

...rchers chose to test each monkey only once and not reward them in any way. This experimental design meant that the monkeys could not learn anything within the experiment and instead were demonstrating their spontaneous numerical abilities. Other aspects of their experimental design avoided drawbacks in prev...

Researchers use brain scans to predict behavior

... world makes sense to you." Sapir noted that the reward systems' predictive abilities may be damaged or missing in some patients with mental illness, causing these patients to perceive the world as alien and unpredictable. Other areas involved in prediction included regions in the visual cortex involved...

Grabbing addiction by the tail

...mbens and to another area of the brain involved in reward and motivation, the ventral tegmental area. The peptide reduced the rats' drug-seeking behavior only when injected into the nucleus accumbens, evidence that the structure is critical for the expression of some of the devastating behaviors of addictio...

Alcoholism, smoking and genetics among Plains American Indians

...se dopamine, the 'pleasure' hormone in the brain's reward pathway." Enoch added that the enzyme COMT plays an important role in the breakdown of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, its activity varying according to a common COMT polymorphism, Val158Met. "The Met allele results in a less efficient en...

'Executive' monkeys influenced by other executives, not subordinates

...of other monkeys and that they will forego a juice reward to look at high-status monkeys. Said Shepherd, "It seemed reasonable to me that in the natural environment monkeys would preferentially follow some individuals' gaze and not others. High-status monkeys, for example, do more to determine where the gr...

Team discovers possible 'universal strategy' to combat addiction

...ated with this PTEN-blocker, it shut down the drug reward process ?including the process that induces craving and withdrawal. The study, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, looked at nicotine and THC (the active ingredient in marij...

Oops! Researchers publish new findings on the brain's response to costly mistakes

...based tests. Some of the tests carried a monetary reward between 25 cents and $2, while others carried penalties of the same size. Still others carried no reward or penalty. The participants were told they had a $10 "credit" to begin, and that they would receive...

Face perception is modulated by sexual orientation

...icates that an area of the brain thought to act in reward circuitry may represent a phase in visual processi...rocessed; and regions in prefrontal cortex and the reward circuitry, where the assessment of facial beauty is processed. Numerous studies have shown that the ...

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