Jon Horvitz

We are examining how reward experiences shape the activity of the basal ganglia, and how the basal ganglia help us to choose our goals and our very next actions.

Psychology Department at CCNY within the City University of New York (CUNY) .

Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Program  of the CUNY Neuroscience Collaborative .

Recent publications:

• Stamos, J., Ma, S., Pawlak, A., Engelhard, N., Horvitz, J.C., West, M.O. Reward vs. motoric activations in NAc Core of rats during Pavlovian conditioning, European Journal of Neuroscience, in press, 2022
• Horvitz, J.H. and Jacobs, B.L Principles of Behavioral Neuroscience (Textbook), Cambridge University Press, July 2022
• Dobrovitsky, V., West, M.O. and Horvitz, J.C.  The role of the nucleus accumbens in learned approach behavior diminishes with training, European Journal of Neuroscience, 50: 3403-15, 2019 
• Vega-Villar, M., Horvitz, J.C., Nicola, S.M.,  NMDA receptor-dependent plasticity in the nucleus accumbens connects reward-predictive cues to approach responses, Nature Communications, 10: 4429, 2019 

Note to prospective graduate students:  My current work involves theoretical models of basal ganglia function in learning and action selection, rather than empirical studies.  And so at the moment my work with graduate students is limited to those with experience in computer programming and an interest in compututational modeling of basal ganglia function.    Issues of interest include:

• the role of cortico-thalamo-cortical (CTC) loops in sustaining activity of cortical assemblies.
• the role of direct and indirect basal ganglia pathways in 'permitting' or 'vetoing'  CTC activity.`
• the role of dopamine reward signals in modifying the strength of corticostriatal synapses.
• the relation between reward-modified corticostriatal synapses and action selection.