From sheep dogs to children: how food reward controls learning. Learning is essential to successfully adapt to changing environments. Anyone with pets or a farming background knows that food is one of

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From sheep dogs to children: how food reward controls learning. Learning is essential to successfully adapt to changing environments. Anyone with pets or a farming background knows that food is one of the strongest universal behavioural rewards, and hunger or food tastiness motivates behaviour by increasing the reward value of food. Therefore, it is no surprise that hunger has provided one of the strongest evolutionary survival pressures to optimise behaviour. Yet, despite decades of behavioural research and millennia of agricultural practices showing that hunger and food reward enhances learning and motivation, we still don’t how brain circuits sensing hunger influence experience-dependent learning. This project examines how hunger and reward pathways interact to control learning.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 3209 - Neurosciences. Lead: Prof Zane Andrews