Behavioral Neuroscience

Behavioral Neuroscience and Neurophysiology Laboratories

The Behavioral Neuroscience and Neurophysiology Laboratories are a component of the UTA Department of Psychology. The laboratories use modern behavioral and electrophysiological analyses to explore the underlying relationship between neuronal function and behavior. This integrative approach involves the use of molecular biology, biochemistry, immunocytohistochemistry, neurophysiology, anatomy, and a wide range of behavioral methodology to understand the function of the nervous system. Members of the neuroscience subprogram use these approaches to explore behavior, pain processing, learning and memory, anxiety, depression and mechanisms underlying drug abuse and addiction.

Pain Research

Pain is a significant national health problem. It is the most common reason individuals seek medical care, with 40 million medical visits annually, costing the American public more than $100 billion each year. Thus, both clinical and basic studies share equal importance in helping benefit patients suffering various conditions of pain. There are various tools to address the pain problem. Here at UTA, we are studying pain by means of basic research and biopsychosocial research. The major interest of our basic research focuses on studying the neurophysiological mechanisms of nociception by means of electrophysiological and behavioral neuroscience techniques.

Yuan Bo Peng, M.D., Professor

Dr. Peng’s research interests include physiological mechanisms of pain. His lab is interested in studying the neurophysiological mechanisms of nociception by means of electrophysiological techniques in both the peripheral and central nervous systems. His lab has been studying in these areas: (1) Dorsal root reflexes in peripheral inflammation; (2) Cortical modulation of spinal dorsal horn neuronal activity; (3) Pain mechanisms of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis; (4) Detection of neuronal activities by optic spectroscopy; (5) Development and application of telemetry system for recording and stimulating in the nervous system.

Linda Perrotti, Professor

Dr. Perrotti’s primary research interests are focused on the neural mechanisms underlying sex differences in the behavioral and molecular responses to psychostimulant and opioid drugs. The overall goal of her work is to clarify interactions among the neuroendocrine system and dopamine reward system using rodent models of addictive behaviors. Her second area of interest is the further examination of the “tail of the ventral tegmental area” or “rostromedial tegmental nucleus” (tVTA/RMTg) as a major nucleus modulating dopamine-driven drug reward. Using rodents as model organisms, She investigates the initiation, acquisition, expression, extinction and reacquisition of conditioned drug reward. She is particularly interested in the biochemical and neuroendocrine factors which predispose certain individuals to respond differentially to drugs of abuse. The goal of her lab’s research is to better understand the biological basis of this disease and to identify major biological targets for potential therapeutic intervention to promote abstinence and prevention.

NEURAL - NET MODELING AND DECISION MAKING 

Daniel Levine, Professor of Research

Dr. Levine's laboratory deals with both experimental and theoretical studies of decision making, cognitive-emotional interactions, and cognitive dissonance. Current research projects include:

• Simulated gambling tasks in which the participant has to decide between two alternatives that provide different probabilities of winning or losing different amounts of (virtual, not actual) money. Dr. Levine and his students look at the effects of various personality variables on gambling choices. They also consider the effect of how the alternatives are presented and how preferences are elicited.
• Studying how emotion contributes to perceived value of resources. Responses of the same participants are compared on two analogous tasks, both involving an unexpected loss after a sequence of gains. Preliminary results suggest the amount of time participants are willing to invest could differ between the two tasks.
• Studying different methods people use to reduce cognitive dissonance. Typically, cognitive dissonance studies assess the degree to which people will change relatively trivial attitudes or beliefs to be consonant with their behavior. However, when attitudes are particularly central to the person’s core identity, it is believed that they will use different methods to resolve cognitive dissonance than attitude change.

The laboratory also has a long-term goal of understanding how interactions among several brain regions (frontal lobes, amygdala, basal ganglia, etc.) contribute to emotionally-influenced decision making. To that end, the laboratory is involved in a collaborative project with a brain imaging laboratory at UT Southwestern to discern relationships between brain region activations and decision style on a probability maximization task. Also, the lab has a long history of pioneering work in brain-based neural network modeling of cognition and behavior (see Dr. Levine), and current modeling efforts are being integrated with the behavioral and physiological studies described above. For information about applying to work in Dr. Levine’s lab, contact him at [email protected] or 817-272-3598.

Stephen G. Lomber, Professor ***

Cortical plasticity is the neural mechanism by which the cerebrum adapts itself to its environment, while at the same time making it vulnerable to impoverished sensory or developmental experiences.  Like the visual system, auditory development passes through a series of sensitive periods in which circuits and connections are established and then refined by experience.  Current research is expanding our understanding of cerebral processing and organization in the deaf.  In the congenitally deaf, higher-order areas of "deaf" auditory cortex demonstrate significant crossmodal plasticity with neurons responding to visual and somatosensory stimuli.  This crucial cerebral function results in compensatory plasticity.  Not only can the remaining inputs reorganize to substitute for those lost, but this additional circuitry also confers enhanced abilities to the remaining systems.  Work in our lab seeks to understand the structure and function of “deaf” auditory cortex using psychophysical, electrophysiological, and connectional anatomy approaches and consider how this knowledge informs our expectations of the capabilities of cochlear implants in the developing brain.

Website: www.cerebralsystems.ca