'Hunger-driven motivational state competition' with Dr Michael Krashes

Past Event

Date
30 March 2017, 1:00pm - 2:00pm

Location
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics
Sherrington Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PT

This seminar is organised by the Programme on Mind and Machine, an Oxford Martin School institute

Abstract: Goal-directed behaviors are sets of motor actions that direct an animal toward an explicit target object, an interaction that promotes individual survival and/or maintains the species. Despite the necessity of motivated behaviors ranging from ingestive to reproductive to aggressive/defensive exploits, an organism can only perform a single action at any given time, highlighting the tremendous flexibility and speed with which the brain can coordinate complex decision-making. We investigate the role distinct levels of satiety play on shaping innate, motivated drive states as well as the subsets of neurons capable of perturbing innate behavioral choice.

Speaker: Michael Krashes is a principal investigator at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Bethesda, Maryland. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2009 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. His research focuses on the neural computations contributing to motivated behavior, with an emphasis on foraging for caloric sustenance.

For further information, please contact Fiona Woods at fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk