Codification of reward's subjective value at the Nucleus Accumbens

AZUL SILVA; MARIANO BELLUSCIO

Mar del Plata

Congreso; XXX CONGRESO ANUAL DE LA SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INVESTIGACION EN NEUROCIENCIAS; 2015

SOCIEDAD ARGENTINA DE INVESTIGACION EN NEUROCIENCIAS

Every action has a purpose. But, how could we evaluate if the result of an action, either to obtain a reward or harm?s avoidance, worth the effort? Our future behavior will depend on this assessment. Rewards are associated with different types of costs (such as delays or uncertainty about its obtaining). These costs affect the perceived value of the rewards (subjective value). The Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) has been implicated in evaluation and decision-making processes, as an interface between motivation and action. aThis nucleus receives projections from motor cortices, assosiative cortices involved in decision-making, limbic areas (as the hippocampus and amygdala) and from dopaminergic neurons. NAc neurons are sensible to the reward's type and volume and they change their response to a stimulus according to the reward's value associated to it. The aim of this project is to understand how this area encodes the subjective value of a reward whose acquisition requires different efforts and how this influences the behavioral response. In order to achieve this we carried out electrophysiological studies of NAc activity of adult male Long Evans rats, while the rats were performing a behavioral test with two different volumes of rewards and different delivery?s delays.