Healthy ageing has been found to be accompanied by changes in slow wave activity (SWA) and cognitive function. Furthermore, these changes have been seen predominantly in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to other regions of the cortex. Current theories of cognitive ageing pro…
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Executive control is a vital cognitive function that facilitates the focussing and shifting of attention, planning and working towards a goal, ignoring distractions, and flexibly responding to novel situations. Disruptions to executive control are seen in many psychiatric and ne…
The pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) has been argued to be involved in mediating neural processing relating to executive functions (Winn, 1998). Since it shares connections with fronto-striatal circuitry this proposal is not surprising. However, research examining the f…
Maturation of social cognition and a gain in social proficiency are universal aspects of adolescent development that prepare an individual for adulthood. Social cognition involves the perception and interpretation of social cues, followed by the generation of a behavioral respon…
Glucocorticoid hormones modulate acute and chronic behavioral and molecular responses to drugs of abuse including psychostimulants and opioids. Acute ethanol activates the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis causing the release of adrenal glucocorticoid hormones, but follo…
This thesis recapitulates the history of research, and current knowledge, of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in order to provide a context for the included scientific articles. The evident,but ill-defined, symptoms of a perturbation of the PFC is still a conundrum to neuroscientists…
Over the past several decades, reinforcement learning has emerged as a unifying framework for reward-based learning and decision making in brains, minds and machines. With a long history crisscrossing the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, reinforce…