Mark Walton
BA MSc DPhil
Wellcome Senior Research Fellow and Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology
- Wellcome Senior Research Fellow
- Associate Professor
Neuropsychology and neurochemistry of decision making
Research Summary
My group are interested in the way in which our brains are able to integrate across these multiple different types of information in order to guide appropriate decisions. We particularly focus on how different aspects of value are learned, represented and used to guide choice behaviour within frontal-striatal-dopaminergic circuits.
The long-term goal is to use the information gleaned about the functional of these systems to better understand how the process of valuation and decision making goes awry in neuropsychiatric disorders.
The laboratory uses a range of recording and interference techniques to address these questions, including electrochemistry (fast-scan cyclic voltammetry to measure sub-second dopamine release and amperometry to record tissue oxygen), targeted lesions, neuropharmacological manipulations, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We are particularly interested to use combinations of techniques in order to investigate communication between brain regions and the causal interactions within these networks.
Our behavioural tasks are designed with an eye to ideas in disciplines such as behavioural ecology, animal learning theory and neuroeconomics as well as behavioural and cognitive neuroscience. These allow us to determine how the different influences on our everyday learning and decision making might be represented in the brain.
Key publications
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Journal article
Papageorgiou GK. et al, (2016), Cell Rep, 15, 221 - 228
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Journal article
Syed ECJ. et al, (2016), Nat Neurosci, 19, 34 - 36
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Journal article
Walton ME. et al, (2010), Neuron, 65, 927 - 939
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Journal article
Gan JO. et al, (2010), Nat Neurosci, 13, 25 - 27
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Journal article
Chakraborty S. et al, (2016), Elife, 5
Recent publications
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What is dopamine doing in model-based reinforcement learning?
Journal article
Akam T. and Walton ME., (2021), Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 38, 74 - 82
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5-HT2c receptors regulate the balance between instrumental vigour and restraint
Journal article
Härmson O. et al, (2020)
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Organisation of afferents along the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral axes of the rat OFC
Journal article
Barreiros IV. et al, (2020)
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Dopamine: Don't Underestimate the Force.
Journal article
Jenkins G. and Walton M., (2020), Curr Biol, 30, R824 - R826
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Behavioral flexibility is associated with changes in structure and function distributed across a frontal cortical network in macaques.
Journal article
Sallet J. et al, (2020), PLoS Biol, 18