Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have zeroed in on the ventral pallidum (VP), an information-processing hub in the brains of mice to discover how VP neurons influence animals' ...
Summary: A paradigm-shifting study has upended a decades-long neurological assumption that learning speed depends entirely on repetition and experience rather than the size of a reward. The research ...
Ten years ago, popular psychology explained motivation quite simply: a person tries because he wants to have fun or avoid punishment. But modern neuroscience shows a more complex picture: our brain ...
A small region of the brain, known as the ventral tegmental area (VTA), plays a key role in how we process rewards. It produces dopamine, a neuromodulator that helps predict future rewards based on ...
A new study is challenging one of neuroscience’s most enduring ideas: that the brain’s reward system exists to make us feel good. Instead, researchers argue that it is built to optimize energy.
Scientists long assumed that learning speed depends primarily on our experience—how many times we try and succeed—not the ...
Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have zeroed in on the ventral pallidum (VP), an information-processing hub in the brains of mice to discover how VP neurons influence animals' ...