Bita Moghaddam, PhD
Oregon Health and Science University
Bita Moghaddam is the Ruth Matarazzo Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). She received a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Kansas followed by postdoctoral training in pharmacology at Yale University. Her research focuses on understanding the neuronal basis of complex behaviors that are critical to mental health, and is distinguished by the substantial impact on the field (H-index 80). Her research has been funded continuously since 1991, including a MERIT award from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Adolescents engage cortical striatal circuits differently during response inhibition
Neuronal underpinning of adolescent impulsivty is poorly understood but has been attributed to an immature frontal cortex and its connections to striatal and other subcortical areas that modulate action selection. We have observed that action-guided reward (outcome) processing by lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and dorsomedial striatum (DMS) neurons differ between adolescents and adults. Here, we test the specific hypothesis that action-outcome associations and response inhibition are processed differently in DMS-OFC circuits in adolescents compared to adults. We find that chemogenetic inhibiting the OFC->DMS projections, while increasing response inhibition in both age groups, makes adults more adolescent-like. Age differences in neural activity in individual regions and in OFC-DMS coordinated activity were observed in both brain regions. In particular, compared to adults, adolescents’ had a weaker engagement of OFC neurons during response inhibition and adolescent OFC-DMS functional connectivity was stronger during reward but weaker during action execution. These data highlight the importance of OFC-DMS circuits for mediating response inhibition in adolescents.