Jesus Mena

E-mail: jmena@wisc.edu

Research Project:

My current research interests center around understanding appetitively motivated behavior. I am exploring the extent to which the prefrontal cortex (PFC) modulates behavioral output associated with basic drives such as feeding. It is hypothesized that the PFC's role is to enable the flexibility required to optimize task-relevant performance and prevent drive-related response sets from completely dominating overall behavioral output in a maladaptive way. Using the rat as a model organism, preliminary findings in the lab suggest that making a temporary pharmacological 'lesion' in the PFC prolongs the amount of time the animal spends eating and decreases the amount of time the animal spends exploring the environment. Thus, I have begun to tease apart the potential influences of different neurotransmitter systems in the PFC on this hypothesis. So far, I have characterized the influence of Glutamate, Dopamine, and Norepinephrine and am currently investigating the role of the Serotonin system. In the future, I intend to use a wide variety of behavioral paradigms as well as neuropharmacological techniques in an attempt to determine the behavioral component that may be guiding these effects (i.e. attention, stress, motivation, etc).