Abschlussarbeiten

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Rats modify their own food preferences by adopting the preferences of other rats. We have demonstrated that damaging the Nucleus Accumbens Shell abolishes this behavior. Our next steps are to describe the essential neuromodulators within the Nucleus Accumbens Shell to adjust preferences according to social information.

The students will be involved in animal handling and care, behavioral testing, and data analysis.

Supervisor:

Language: English

Acute stress has become an inescapable companion of our daily lives - whether it's due to a delayed train, a traffic jam, or an urgent deadline. As such, it is likely to affect everyday processes, such as decision-making. To investigate this, we will conduct a psychopharmacological study on the effects of stress on economic and moral decision-making behavior in the context of social decision-making. In addition, stress may also affect emotion processing. Therefore, we will also investigate the effect of the psychopharmacological manipulation on affect misattribution.

Supervisor:

Language: English or German

Teamwork: is possible

Choice overload refers to a phenomenon in which having many options to choose from negatively impacts decision-making, e.g., by decreasing choice satisfaction. This is influenced by various aspects of the choice environment, such as the complexity of the options. Thus, the presentation of a decision task may influence the behavior of decision makers in different choice modalities, such as prosocial choices. Using an online experiment, we aim to investigate the effects of choice overload on prosocial decision-making.

Supervisor:

Language: English or German

Teamwork: is possible

The experience of acute stress leads to a cascade of psychological and physiological changes. But what specific consequences these changes have for our behaviour is unclear. Why do some people seek out the company of others when stressed? How does stress change the way we respond to rewards, such as food? How can we make better decisions under stress?

Supervisor:

Language: English (German possible, English preferred)

We try to investigate the underlying mechanisms of (pro)social decision-making in male rats by applying a Skinner-Box paradigm. Furthermore, social- and non-social reward tasks will be applied as a control for confounders. Additionally, dominance and hierarchy could be a relevant factor for the decision-making process and are investigated as well. To get a profound understanding about reward processing, we make use of a transgenic rat model with disturbed dopamine homeostasis (tgDISC1 rat model, Trossbach et al., 2016) and aim at targeted molecular manipulation (eg. lesions, disconnections, optogenetics).
The topic is available from winter term 2023

Supervisor:

Language: English