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choice lab
Jamie Donahey Roitman
RESEARCH
Anchor 6
Adolescent substance use
Substance use during adolescence has the potential to alter the developing prefrontal cortex and the behaviors that rely on mature prefrontal signaling. We study how opioid, cannabinoid, alcohol, and psychostimulant use during adolescence contributes to reinforcer pathology, resulting in shifts in reward sensitivity and choice biases in probabilistic and delayed rewards in adulthood.
Food insecurity
Lack of predictable access to healthy food is a risk factor for overweight/obesity and impulsivity. We model the effects of food insecurity across the lifespan on physiology and behavior.
We use fiber photometry to examine the effects of motivational states (hunger, thirst, salt appetite), associative learning (classical conditioning, conditioned place preference), and reward modality (food, fluid, ICSS) on mesolimbic signaling. The PASTa toolbox (Photometry Analysis and Signal processing Toolbox) is an open-source toolbox for processing fiber photometry from raw data through scaling, subtraction, filtering, normalization and transient detection.
Techniques
Adolescent substance use
Alcohol consumption
Opioid, cannabinoid, stimulant administration
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Food insecurity
Metabolic effects
Impulsivity
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Behavior
Associative learning
Reversal learning
Progressive ratio
Delay discounting
Probabilistic discounting
Go/NoGo
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Neural measurements
Single unit recordings
Fiber photometry
PASTa toolbox for photometry analysis
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Reward sensitivity
Intracranial self-stimulation (ICSS) of medial forebrain bundle
Rate-frequency psychophysics
Task behavior reinforcer
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Chemogenetics
Excitatory and inhibitory DREADDS
Immunohistochemistry
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Science through art
Baking Bad: Good gingerbread gone wrong
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