Dr Laura Corbit (University of Toronto)

Bio

I received my PhD from UCLA where I worked with Bernard Balleine studying the neural circuits underlying goal-directed learning. I completed my postdoctoral training in the lab of Patricia Janak at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Centre where I studied how exposure to alcohol altered behavioural control.  From there I moved to the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney where I was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer until 2017 when I moved to the University of Toronto where I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology.

My lab continues to study the behavioural and neural control of instrumental learning and reward-seeking behaviours. We are particularly interested in the role of different types of behavioural control and how they are acquired, as well as how life experiences such as diet or exposure to drugs alters learning and behaviour.

Understanding the effects of diet on decision-making and the neural circuits underlying behavioural control

Abstract

Habits provide a rapid, efficient means for decision making however, this comes with a loss of behavioural flexibility.  Although striatal circuits are involved in habit learning, little is known about how experiences that accelerate habit learning alter activity in these circuits to promote premature habitual control.  Using the outcome devaluation task to distinguish flexible actions from habits, we have found that long-term access to an obesogenic diet promotes habitual behavioural control. I will present data that demonstrate changes to glutamate transmission and microglial activity following the obesogenic diet, pharmacological reversal of which restored goal-directed control. These results have important implications for understanding failures of behavioural control and strategies for improving behavioural flexibility.