Mauricio Delgado Professor, Rutgers University

Title: Reward Processing in the Social Brain

From winning a raffle to receiving praise from a colleague, the experience of reward elicits positive emotions, shapes our behavior and influences our emotional well-being.  Central to processing rewards is the role of the striatum - the input unit of the basal ganglia and a key node in a putative human reward circuit.  This talk will first describe early efforts aimed at characterizing a reward-related signal in the human striatum, its association with other brain regions and the impact on decision making.  We will then highlight how the surrounding social context (i.e., the level of closeness between individuals) can change reward-related responses and the inherent experience of a reward.  Finally, we will focus on the beneficial effects that positive emotions experienced by our social brain can have on our well-being, such as helping cope with negative affect elicited by acute stress.

URL for more information: https://sasn.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/mauricio-delgado-0