Extinction Learning in the 4th Dimension (A01)

• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 316803389

This project aims to understand neural fundaments of extinction of appetitive conditioning in pigeons in a design that permits to analyze neural events governing acquisition, context dependent extinction and renewal along the full time frame (the 4th dimension). We combine single cell recordings, fMRI and optogenetic methods in awake pigeons to analyze key events as well as causal interactions between brain areas of the extinction network (NCL, MVL, NIL, Entopallium) at the cellular and at the overall systems level. By studying the pigeon as an animal model we aim to discover variant as well as invariant properties of extinction learning in terms of behavior and neurobiology.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1280: Extinction Learning
• Applicant Institution: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Onur Güntürkün; Dr. Roland Pusch