Project description
Incentive salience and addictive human behaviour
Rewards are ‘liked’ and ‘wanted,’ but the brain circuitry that mediates psychological ‘wanting’ is dissociable from circuitry that mediates how something is ‘liked.’ Incentive salience is a ‘wanting’ form of motivation, generated by the neural systems that include mesolimbic dopamine. A leading theory of addiction posits that drug stimulation of the brain’s reward system may create intense incentive salience for drug-related stimuli. Studies on animal models have linked incentive salience to signalling in mesocorticolimbic brain systems and the release of nigrostriatal dopamine. The EU-funded INSENSE project aims to use cutting-edge tools from cognitive neuroscience to characterise the substrates of human incentive salience and determine how malfunctions in these systems underlie addictive human behaviour.
Objective
Incentive salience is a form of motivation for reward that is triggered by environmental cues. These come to be ‘wanted’: they create an urge or craving for approach and consumption that influences choice and guides action. Stimuli imbued with incentive salience are thought to become salient, attention-drawing, and impossible to ignore, and a leading theory of addiction proposes that drug stimulation of the brain’s reward system may create intense and abnormal incentive salience for drug-related stimuli. Consistent with this, work with animals has linked incentive salience to signaling in mesocorticolimbic brain systems, and the release of nigrostriatal dopamine in particular. But direct investigation of incentive salience in human cognition is sparse, and the application of ideas from animal research to our understanding of human incentive salience has led to pervasive ambiguity and misunderstanding. The objective of INSENSE is therefore to use cutting-edge tools from cognitive neuroscience to a.) characterize the computational and neural substrates of human incentive salience, and b.) determine how failures in these systems underlie addictive human behaviour. This is accomplished through the combined use of techniques like transcranial electrical stimulation, psychopharmacology, electroencephalogram, multivariate pattern analysis of functional magnetic resonance data, and computational modelling in order to index, characterize, and manipulate the neural representation of naturalistic reward-associated stimuli.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2018-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
B15 2TT Birmingham
United Kingdom
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.