Our aim is to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behaviour and cognition. We are interested in how animals acquire information about the environment, process that information, and then select an action that leads to a particular goal.

Our research covers most of the neuroaxis, including the cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, midbrain and brainstem, while taking into account how these structures operate within functional systems. We also have interests in a variety of well-defined neurochemical systems, with a special focus on dopamine and acetylcholine, as well as a rapidly growing interest in the effects of steroid hormones on neural development and behaviour.

Our research focuses on the brains and behaviour of rats and mice; however, our results have important implications for understanding human neurological and psychiatric illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and drug addiction.

Research methods

The research conducted by the Behavioural Neuroscience group has received strong financial support, continuous over many years, from the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, the Leverhulme Trust, BBSRC, EPSRC and industrial partners.

The work is carried out, in state-of-the art laboratories. The experimental techniques used in our laboratories include a range of conditioned and unconditioned behavioural tests for rodents (such as operant tests, open field, plus-maze and radial-maze), neurophysiological analysis of single neurons in alert rats, psychopharmacological techniques (including drug self-administration), in vivo neurochemistry, histological techniques (including immunohistochemistry and microscopy), and enzyme-immunoassay of steroid hormones.

Collaborations

Within St Andrews, the Behavioural Neuroscience group constitutes part of the Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences , which involves researchers from the Schools of Psychology, Biology, Chemistry and Medicine.

Our group members also have links with a number of industrial partners (including Organon and Lundbeck) and other universities in the UK and abroad (including Saint Louis University School of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology, UC Irvine and Neurobiologie Intégrative des Systèmes Cholinergiques, Institut Pasteur, Paris)

Research topics

Core topics for members of this research group include:

• Goal-directed behaviour versus stimulus-response habits: fos expression in the striatum
• Can dopamine signals account for adaptive but suboptimal microeconomic choices?
• Attentional functions of the thalamic reticular nucleus
• Frontal-executive dysfunction in a rodent model of schizophenia
• Hormonal influences on anxiety-like behaviour in adolescent rodents
• Sex differences in the development of the dopamine system
• Pedunculopontine, dopamine neurons and nicotine abuse
• Making associations: is the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus involved in learning about the outcomes of actions?
• Understanding the role of the pedunculopontine in Parkinson's disease

Group members

James Ainge

is interested in the underlying neural mechanisms of spatial and episodic memory. His research examines the internal spatial representations (cognitive maps) that animals form of familiar environments and how these may be used to encode information about experiences that occur in those places. Specific research interests include how and where contextual information is represented in the brain and how this is used to guide ongoing behaviour and plan future responses.

Eric Bowman

is interested in the relationship between dopamine neural activity and reward, reinforcement learning and motivation. A secondary focus is the behavioural neuroscience of microeconomic decision making. Future plans include broadening the neurophysiological research to include EEG recordings in rats of evoked potentials that are impaired in schizophrenia.

Gillian Brown

is interested in how hormones influence behaviour and the development of the brain, with particular emphasis on sex differences in exploration and novelty-seeking in adolescent rodents. Other interests include behavioural development in primates and evolutionary perspectives on behaviour.

Verity Brown

is interested in how the brain organizes responses and controls movement. Current research focuses on the neural substrates of the processes whereby "will" is translated into action.

Associated members

Sue Healy

has several avenues of research currently underway all stemming from an interest in relationships between behaviour and the correlated neural processing, specifically the processing of spatial information; adaptive specialisation of memory; effects of behavioural experience on the development of the avian hippocampus, particularly in migrant songbirds; field tests of spatial memory and context-dependent choice in hummingbirds.

Institutes and research centres

Society affiliations