My goal is to develop a framework that is both general and species-typical, and that combines the study of control possibilities in the laboratory with the importance of ecological and phylogenetic variables that are easier to identify initially in natural environments. Other students have worked on the tactics and control of spatial foraging in rats, and simulations of risk sensitive foraging. Still other students worked on the role of conditioned appetitive states in backward conditioning, serial forward conditioning, and the interval timing of multiple appetitive behaviors. Finally, students have studied the control of general search behavior by frustrative states, D1 dopamine receptors in dopaminergic neurons, and ventral forebrain structures such as the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala. The influence of current-visit experience within a prey patch on patch persistence.
Circadian activity precedes daily methamphetamine injections in the rat.
Meal-engendered circadian ensuing activity in rats. A clarification of the nature of backward excitatory conditioning. Response cost and time-place discrimination by rats in maze tasks. Facilitation of preparatory behavior in an artificial prey paradigm by D1 dopamine receptor activation. Behavioural Brain Research.