Jacqueline Scholl from University of Oxford will give a talk at NeuroSpin on November18th. 

Short abstract:

Animals and humans need to flexibly adapt to changing environments. They need to adjust their behaviour, when old believes are challenged by new information or action cease to be rewarded. However, instead of simply updating one’s beliefs, sometimes whole sources of information need to be disregarded when they become unreliable.
Jacqueline Scholl is interested in the separate cognitive processes underlying these processes, how the underlying mechanisms can be teased apart with cognitive models and how one can explore the underlying neural mechanisms.
In this talk she will focus specifically on the roles different neurotransmitter and modulator systems play for allowing flexible behaviour. This will include data on how serotonin manipulation can modulate plasticity, how naturally occurring variation in glutamate and GABA and drug induced changes in NMDA (glutamate receptor) change what information people rely on and how they integrate it, putting it in context with behavioural flexibility.
Jacqueline Scholl will also look at how flexibility can be influenced by different psychiatric symptoms. For this, she will show data from a large sample of participants (n=450) that highlights how symptoms of apathy and compulsivity can lead to more habitual or repetitive behaviour, driven by distinct underlying reasons.