QBI Neuroscience Seminar: Dysexecutive syndrome: The cortical- and thalamo-striatal pathways and disorders of goal-directed action.

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 03 April 2013

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

Auditorium, Level 7

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Speaker: Professor Bernard Balleine
Brain & Mind Research Institute, School of Medical Sciences, University of Sydney

Title: Dysexecutive syndrome: The cortical- and thalamo-striatal pathways and disorders of goal-directed action.

Abstract: The cortico-striatal pathway has long been known to play an important role in executive functions, particularly in decision-making involving goal-directed actions, and changes in this pathway have been linked to the cognitive symptoms associated with various forms of psychiatric disorder, neurodegenerative conditions and addiction. Recent research in animal models has established that this pathway is essential for striatal plasticity associated with the acquisition of new actions; damage to this pathway renders actions less deliberated and more impulsive or habitual. Furthermore, although the acquisition of new actions doesn't involve the thalamo-striatal pathway, its damage renders the learning process associated with such actions vulnerable to interference when environmental contingencies change resulting in the catastrophic loss of prior learning; i.e. what is usually called a memory impairment. Together, therefore, these pathways are necessary to encode and to retain goal-directed actions; for the development of new strategies and their integration with old solutions.