Question

Psychology of Learning: Dwight is deciding between the Lord of the Rings convention or the Star Trek convention. He values the futuristic aspect of the Star Trek convention more.

a) In comparing his ventral medial prefrontal cortex neural signal, which convention would lead to greater activation while he is making the decision?

b) Dwight originally valued the LOTR convention at 5 and the Star Trek convention at 8. He went to both conventions and rated his new experience of the LOTR convention at a 8 and the Star Trek convention at 9. Which convention would give Dwight greater ventral striatum signal?

c) While on his farm, Dwight was hit with a beet and there was a lesion in his ventral striatum (in that the striatum doesn't work anymore). How will his learning change.

Answer 1

When studying the Striatum there are two predominant distinctions that are studied, The dorsal striatum and the Ventral Striatum. The Ventral Striatum is especially of importance to the field of psychology as it is involved in the processing of three factors, which form the kernel of this domain, and they are Decision making, Reward processing and the motivation factor.

To better understand Dwights processing of information and hence decision making it would benefit us to break down the chief components of Ventral Striatum, which are, Nucleus Accumbens and Olfactory Tubercle. The Nucleus accumbens is fundamentally associated with the reward processing for a given individual at a given time as the two chief neurotransmitters at function here are dopamine (responsible for the generation of desire) and serotonin (can affect a multitude of things such as mood, emotion, behavior, sexual drive etc).

Now, there is a connection that persists between the amygdala and the Ventral Striatum which leads to the conduit of interpretation of emotion and, hence elicitation of behavior. The lateral and Basal Amygdala are responsible for the conveyance of information (associative in nature) apropos a certain stimulus which further predicts the establishment of reinforcements.

Once a motivation has been reinforced it is habituated to take place again.

a) Hence, the star trek convention would lead to greater activation.

b) And also, due to the aforementioned explanation The Star Trek convention would provide him with greater Ventral Striatum signal.

c) Damage to it is causally associated with a decrease in processing of reward and hence lesser motivation.