Dr Wolfram Schultz

Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge
Email: ws234@cam.ac.uk
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Wolfram Schultz is interested to relate the mechanics of brain activity to measurable behaviour. His research interests concern the role of the primate basal ganglia and frontal cortex in goal-directed behaviour. He combines neurophysiological with behavioural techniques in non-human primates in order to localize and investigate mechanisms of cognitive and motivational functions underlying goal-directed behaviour at the level of single neurons. His group investigates how reward information is processed by dopamine neurons and relates these findings to animal learning theory.

They study neuronal network models to test some of the predictions from the experimental work and produce further testable hypotheses. They also study neurons in the striatum and different areas of frontal cortex during the intention and preparation of self-initiated movements and investigate how reward expectation and reward preferences influence task-related activity. In collaborative work, he is localizing reward centres in the human brain with functional imaging.