Mehran Ahmadlou - Neuroscience 'From Body Signals to Choice: Neural Mechanisms of Reward-based, State-dependent Decision-making'

Every day, we make choices—what to eat, whether to wait for something better, or how much risk to take. These decisions might feel rational, but they are powerfully influenced by what is happening inside our bodies. Hunger or stress, for example, can make us more impulsive, more risk-seeking, or less sensitive to the actual value of a reward. These shifts are not only part of everyday life but also play a role in mental health conditions such as addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders. The brain systems that shape these processes connect deep hypothalamic regions, which monitor internal states like hunger and stress, with higher-order areas in the prefrontal cortex, which are crucial for evaluating options and making decisions. When these systems interact, the “equations” of decision-making, how strongly we care about reward size, how patiently we wait for delayed rewards, or how we respond to uncertain outcomes, can change dramatically. In this project, the Neurobehavior Lab will study how hypothalamic signals of hunger and stress alter decision-making in a multi-choice task and will investigate the neural basis. Using advanced methods in freely moving mice—including miniaturized two-photon microscopy, Neuropixels recordings, fibre photometry, and targeted manipulations with optogenetics and chemogenetics—we aim to uncover how these internal signals reshape neural representations of reward amount, delay, and uncertainty, and how these changes ultimately affect choice behaviour. This research will shed light on how body states influence behaviour and help explain why decision-making often goes awry in some of the most prevalent neuropathological conditions.