[CTN] UW Biomedical Discussion Group - April 13th - Dr. Catharine Winstanley (UBC)

[Matthijs van der Meer]

Hi everyone,

The next meeting of the UW Biomedical Discussion Group will be held
Wednesday April 13th in EIT-3142, from 2:30-3:30 p.m. The speaker is
Dr. Catharine Winstanley, Department of Psychology, University of
British Columbia. Coffee/refreshments will be available. Please extend
the invitation to anyone else who may be interested. If you would like
to meet with Dr. Winstanley during her visit, please contact her host
Dr. Matt van der Meer (mvdm at uwaterloo.ca).

Title and Abstract for the talk:

Rats, risk and research: What can rats teach us about the
neurobiological basis of impulsivity and gambling?

Impulsivity can be broadly defined as acting or making decisions
without appropriate forethought, thereby enhancing the potential for
negative consequences. High levels of such impulsive behaviours are
associated with psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder and
ADHD, and impulsivity is increasingly recognised as a risk factor for
drug addiction. Using animal models of drug self-administration, and
tests of impulsive behaviour adapted from neuropsychology protocols,
neuroscientists have shown that highly impulsive rats resemble human
drug addicts in how they take cocaine. Furthermore, repeated
self-administration of cocaine can likewise enhance impulsivity during
withdrawal, suggesting that poor impulse control can contribute to
both initial drug-seeking and subsequent relapse. Both neuroimaging
and gene expression data highlight important roles for the
orbitofrontal cortex and striatal dopamine signalling in these
processes. Pathological gambling has recently been described as a
behavioural addiction, and high impulsivity has also been observed in
this clinical population. Building on the success of behavioural
models of drug addiction and impulse control, researchers have begun
to develop rodent analogues of gambling-related decision-making in
order to investigate the extent to which behavioural and chemical
addictions might overlap in terms of their brain circuitry and
neurochemical control. Our own data so far suggests that rats'
performance in gambling-like tasks resembles that of humans, even with
respect to potential cognitive biases or "irrationality".
Furthermore, different aspects of gambling-like behaviour can be
modulated by serotonergic and dopaminergic drugs, paralleling some
clinical findings. These rodent models of gambling processes may
therefore provide useful data regarding the neurobiological basis of
gambling and putative pharmacotherapies for problem gambling behaviour.

http://www.psych.ubc.ca/faculty/profile/index.psy?fullname=Winstanley,%20Catharine&area=Behavioural%20Neuroscience&designation=core