More Brain Points

Understanding Decision Making Behavior

We make decision every day, from the moment we wake up to the moment we choose to go to sleep. Thus, understanding decision making and which parts of the brain we use for this behavior is very important. Brian Sweis, a medical student at University of Minnesota, gave a very informative talk about his research with decision making. Sweis used rats to study decision making strategies in various tasks. In his research, rats were food deprived and had to make the most of their time when they were allowed to collect food in the maze. Through the usage of different pitches, the rats were able to find out how long it will take for them to get food at different stations. Through this, the rat was able to decide if it wanted to use his time to wait for food or move onto a different station in hope of getting the food pellet faster there. Sweis is also using optogenetic to make models for drug addiction behavior. Optogenetic is a technique which involves using light to control cells in tissues that have light sensitive ion channels. Sweis discussed how this technique would allow him to play around with decision making in the brain and also possible reverse any changes induced by the repetitive usage of the drug.

An article that related to Brian Sweis’s research is The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts in the New York Times. The article is about Carl Hart, a researcher and an associate professor at Columbia University, and his research with decision making in cocaine addicts. In the article, it discusses how Hart brought in crack addicts to smoke pharmaceutical grade cocaine in the lab, so that he could observe their behavior (Tierney). In the article it talks about decision making behavior related to cocaine usage, it states that “those addicts seemed enslaved by crack, like the laboratory rats that couldn’t stop pressing the lever for cocaine even as they were starving to death. The cocaine was providing such powerful dopamine stimulation to the brain’s reward center that the addicts couldn’t resist taking another hit” (Tierney). This quote shows the decision making behavior related to stimulating the brain’s reward center through the usage of cocaine. This is related to Brain Sweis’s research as he studied cocaine addiction to show that repeated cocaine usage causing plasticity in the neurons that were part of the motivation and reward circuit.

Works Cited

"Rat." Rat Image. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Mar. 2016. <http://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/4841983154_b73dcfda4d_b.jpg>.

Tierney, John. "The Rational Choices of Crack Addicts." The New York Times. The New York Times, 16 Sept. 2013. Web. 01 Mar. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/science/the-rational-choices-of-crack-addicts.html?_r=0>.