Poster Presented at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2024 : October 2024
Abstract
The neural representation of reward is underpinned by neurotransmitter systems such as dopamine, opioids, serotonin, and oxytocin. However, current human neuroimaging techniques are either un-informative for neurotransmitter substrates or are unable to comprehensively examine multiple neurotransmitter receptors. In this study, we investigated various neurotransmitter receptor systems involved in representation of social, food, and monetary reward stimuli by comparing the results from functional magnetic resonance imaging and the mappings of neurotransmitter receptor-related gene expressions. The pattern of whole-brain neural activity when social, food, and monetary reward cues were presented was examined by training linear support vector machines to classify the different conditions. Secondly, the correlation between neural activity maps that discriminate between conditions and neurotransmitter receptor-related gene expression maps was examined. We found that food, social, and monetary reward stimuli are associated with specific patterns of neurotransmitter systems, and our results have the potential to lead to pharmacological interventions by providing knowledge of the molecular basis of the neural representation of different rewards using non-invasive neuroimaging techniques.
Poster presented at the SfN 2024
