Date: Friday, November 22, 2019
Time: 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Location: Simons Center Conference Room, Building 46, Room 6011, 6th Floor, MIT (43 Vassar Street, Cambridge, 02139 MA)

Speaker: Ann Graybiel, Ph.D.

Affiliation: Institute Professor, MIT; Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

Talk title: The Striatum and the Motivation to Act.

Abstract: The striatum was once thought to be a primitive part of the forebrain, despite evidence that basal ganglia dysfunction underlies major extrapyramidal disorders. Our work has contributed to the surprising realization that the striatum actually has a sophisticated compartmental structure, that striatal circuits are implicated in decision-making and in neuropsychiatric as well as motor disorders, and that special modules in the striatum, called striosomes, are focal points in circuits linking mood-related neocortex with midbrain dopamine-containing neurons and other neuromodulatory regions. The striatum thus modulates a broad range of circuits affecting our behavioral state in health and disease.