Genetic influence on the modulation of attention and memory via reward or punishment (A08+)

• Subject Area: Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2008 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 36555331

In this project we investigate genetic influences on motivated learning and memory processes in humans. In the third funding period, we aim to focus on genetic influences on flexibility and specificity in motivated learning and memory and their neural correlates. Flexibility, in the context of our study, is the ability of an individual to adapt motivated behaviour to changing stimulus-feedback associations. Specificity is defined as the strength of an association between a stimulus and a context ¿ as opposed to a context-independent response to a stimulus, i.e. generalization. Given the frequent disturbances of flexibility (e.g. in depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder) and specificity (e.g. in anxiety disorders) in psychiatric disorders, we focus our genetic analyses on variants of synaptic proteins identified in psychiatric genome-wide association studies.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 779: Neurobiology of Motivated Behaviour
• Applicant Institution: Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg
• Co-Applicant Institution: Leibniz-Institut für Neurobiologie (LIN)
• Project Heads: Privatdozent Dr. Björn Hendrik Schott; Professorin Dr. Constanze Seidenbecher; Professor Dr. Martin Zenker