Ethan Bromberg-Martin, a GPP student in the National Eye Institute and the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University will be presenting his thesis research at the NIH next week (May 28th) and he invites you to attend this presentation.  His final defense will be on June 2nd at Brown University.  Please come and support graduate student research at the NIH. 
 
NIH-GPP Thesis Presentation: "The Role of Dopamine in Information-Seeking"

PhD Candidate:  Ethan Bromberg-Martin, Department of Neuroscience, Brown University

Advisor: Dr. Okihide Hikosaka, Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute

Date/Time/Location:  May 28 (Thurs), 1:00 PM, Building 49, Room 1A51

Abstract:
The desire for knowledge about the future is a powerful motivator in everyday life, but it is unknown how this desire is created by neurons in the brain. Here I will present a candidate for this role in the spiking activity of midbrain dopamine neurons. I will show that rhesus monkeys actively seek advance information about the size of upcoming rewards, and that the same dopamine neurons that signal the animal’s expectation of “primitive” rewards like food and water also signal the “cognitive” reward of information. This unified neural code for appetitive and informational rewards suggests a new view of reward learning, in which information-seeking has a fundamental role.