Dokument: Neurochemical mechanisms of cortical dynamics and decision making
| Titel: | Neurochemical mechanisms of cortical dynamics and decision making | |||||||
| URL für Lesezeichen: | https://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DocumentServlet?id=74578 | |||||||
| URN (NBN): | urn:nbn:de:hbz:061-20260928-103958-0 | |||||||
| Kollektion: | Dissertationen | |||||||
| Sprache: | Deutsch | |||||||
| Dokumententyp: | Wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten » Dissertation | |||||||
| Medientyp: | Text | |||||||
| Autor: | Dias Maile, Ana Antonia [Autor] | |||||||
| Dateien: |
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| Beitragende: | Prof. Dr. Jocham, Gerhard [Gutachter] Prof. Dr. Becker, Susanne [Gutachter] | |||||||
| Dewey Dezimal-Klassifikation: | 100 Philosophie und Psychologie » 150 Psychologie | |||||||
| Beschreibung: | From simple perceptual judgements to complex goal-directed actions, behavior is shaped by a continuous stream of decisions. As such, decision making provides a window into cognition by revealing the outcomes of otherwise hidden neuronal processes. Across contexts, decisions require the evaluation and integration of information relevant for guiding behavior. Such information may originate from the environment, where choice options often differ across several attributes. In addition, past experiences enable the formation of expectations and preferences. Distinct neuronal mechanisms enable the processing and integration of this large volume of information into choices. This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of these processes central to adaptive behavior by investigating the neurochemical mechanisms underlying information processing during rest, decision making and learning. First, we investigated the role of GABA and NMDA receptor activity in shaping cortical timescales and network dynamics at rest. These cortical mechanisms form the temporal and spatial organization of the brain and determine how information is integrated across time in distributed cortical regions. Second, we examined the role of dopamine in arbitrating between decision strategies that determine how attributes of different choice options are integrated to a unified value representation. We identified a specific role of dopamine in shaping the use of choice-relevant attributes during decision making, thereby modulating the extent to which choices were driven by available information. Finally, we investigated the role of acetylcholine and noradrenaline in the integration of bottom-up perceptual information with top-down learned beliefs. We found that both neurotransmitter systems play an important role during learning by determining the updating of prior expectations in response to new evidence. Together, this dissertation contributes to a more integrated understanding of how neurochemical systems shape neuronal dynamics during rest and decision making during behavior. Our findings demonstrate that distinct neurotransmitter systems play complementary roles in shaping the processing and weighting of information across cognitive contexts. A challenge for future work is to characterize how cognition emerges from the coordinated activity of multiple neurotransmitter systems operating across different brain regions and temporal scales. | |||||||
| Lizenz: | ![]() Dieses Werk ist lizenziert unter einer Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International Lizenz | |||||||
| Fachbereich / Einrichtung: | Mathematisch- Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät » WE Psychologie | |||||||
| Dokument erstellt am: | 28.09.2026 | |||||||
| Dateien geändert am: | 28.09.2026 | |||||||
| Datum der Promotion: | 23.09.2026 |

