Project Summary

Sharif A. Taha, Ph.D. (Young Investigator 2006) of the Ernest Gallo Clinic & Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco, will use an animal model to study the brain circuits involved in behavioral switching, dysfunction of which may occur in schizophrenia, causing patients not to filter irrelevant or unimportant stimuli. Dr. Taha will study the nucleus accumbus, a brain region believed to play a role in behavioral switching. Dr. Taha will record neural activity in rats as they perform a latent inhibition task, a well-validated model of behavioral switching. In these experiments, Dr. Taha will test two predictions of a prominent hypothesis for the mechanism underlying behavioral selection. First, do distinct subsets of nucleus accumbens neurons encode information related to competing behaviors? Second, does amphetamine administration selectively increase neural firing that encodes behaviorally salient events? Data from these experiments should significantly extend understanding of the neural mechanism underlying disordered behavioral selection in schizophrenia.

Program Area: SCHIZOPHRENIA/PSYCHOTIC DISORDERS\Schizophrenia

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