VIRTUAL EVENT: UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences 2020

The UCL Prize Lecture 2020 will be given by Dr Ann Graybiel, Professor and Investigator at the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research

A picture of Dr Ann Graybiel stood in front of a staircase

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VIRTUAL EVENT: UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences 2020

17 Nov 2020, 15:30 – 17:00

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UCL Prize Lecture in Life and Medical Sciences 2020 (previously the UCL Clinical Prize Lecture) will be given by Dr Ann Graybiel, Institute Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an Investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Title: Making Decisions Based on Value: Mood States and Brain Circuits

Abstract: We make many decisions about what to do based on how we evaluate the costs and benefits of our potential actions. Some of this decision-making is straight-forward, and we are scarcely notice ourselves thinking. But in other situations, and in individuals with extra stress or certain medical conditions, this kind of decision-making can provoke high anxiety. The Covid-19 pandemic, for many, has brought such cost-benefit decision-making to the fore. This lecture will highlight recent neuroscience research that focuses on neural circuits that are especially called to action during such motivationally challenging decision-making. The work highlights switching circuits in the basal ganglia that the brain can use to adjust both our moods and our subjective evaluations of the future.

Event programme:

15:30 – Introduction from Professor Michael Arthur, President & Provost, UCL

15:40 – Lecture by Dr Ann Graybiel, Institute Professor, MIT

16:30 – Closing remarks by Professor Michael Arthur and hand over to Professor David Lomas, Vice Provost (Health) to facilitate Q&A

16:35 – Live Q&A with Dr Ann Graybiel

17:00 – End of Lecture

Dr Ann Graybiel

Institute Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Ann M. Graybiel is an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she and her laboratory are actively investigating neural circuits related to the basal ganglia. Her work is centred on understanding the functions of circuits leading from mood-related parts of the frontal neocortex through the striatum to the dopamine-containing neurons of the midbrain, that are key regulators of movement and motivation and reinforcement-based learning. This work took its origin in her discovery of neurochemically distinct compartments in the striatum, which she named ‘striosomes’ (striatal bodies). Using a wide range of methodologies, Graybiel transformed the field of decision making with her discovery that striosomes act as switches in these mood-state related circuits. Using engineered mice, she has shown that this cortex-striosome circuit is essential for value-based learning, and that its manipulation can alter actions resulting from challenging decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis. This key decision-making behaviour can become abnormal in humans under mood state disturbances, neuropsychiatric disorders and addictive and compulsively repetitive behaviours, Her group is now identifying molecular genetic markers of these circuits, with the goal of contributing to clinical medicine.