The question of how motivation affects our behavior is a long debated issue. Beyond pleasure and pain, motivation is closely related to cognitive functions and a key player in the self-regulation. The relationship between cognition and motivation was investigated from several angles, but a parsimonious explanation still awaits.
In order to create a framework to understand the interaction between cognition and motivation, I chose two aspects of this relationship. Executive functions are one of the most studied psychological concepts and their components closely resemble the units of motivational processes. Secondly, a specific neural signature, dopamine, was selected due to its involvement in both executive functions and motivational processes. To enable dissection of motivation, in this thesis, we used a translational and a multilevel approach.
In the first part, we focused on schizophrenia, which has a clinical presentation of cognitive (especially executive functions) and motivational deficits. Using a transgenic animal model mimicking the dopaminergic dysfunction related to schizophrenia, we manipulated motivation genetically, behaviorally, and pharmacologically and presented the changes in interval timing function.
Part 2 of this thesis consists of 3 studies performed in humans to delineate the role of motivational orientations as measured by regulatory focus and regulatory mode surveys. A probabilistic reversal task and an n-back task were used to explore different components of executive functions; namely maintenance and monitoring, updating the representations, switching, and behavioral inhibition. The results of these studies showed that specific motivational orientations and their interactions could predict cognitive performance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D8DF6R7R |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Avlar, Billur |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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