Mark John Thomas

This study investigates how dopamine signaling and D1+ neurons in the basolateral amygdala influence cocaine seeking behavior in rats through environmental cues.

This study investigates how BLA dopamine signaling encodes emotional salience during associative learning, showing it reflects relative stimulus importance rather than associative strength or reward value.

This study shows that biological sex and gonadal hormones influence cocaine-induced behavioral and neuronal plasticity in mice, with males and females showing distinct responses.

This study investigates sex and estrous cycle differences in cocaine-induced changes to D1R- and D2R-MSN excitability in the mouse nucleus accumbens core, finding significant sex-specific effects.

This study shows sex differences in cocaine-induced plasticity in D1- and D2-MSNs of the mouse nucleus accumbens shell, with males showing reduced D1-MSN excitability and females showing increased D2-MSN excitability.

This study shows acetic acid, an ethanol metabolite, increases excitability of accumbens shell neurons via NMDAR activation, with stronger effects in females.

The paper tests a model proposing that sunk cost sensitivity in foraging tasks is due to task performance mechanics, finding it incompatible with data and supporting actual sunk cost sensitivity.

The paper shows that APP mice, a model of Alzheimer's disease, exhibit sex-specific changes in decision-making strategies, with impaired procedural cognition and reliance on deliberation, linked to striatal amyloid-beta pathology.

This study investigates morphine-induced changes in glutamate transmission in nucleus accumbens neurons, identifying distinct plasticity patterns in D1- and D2-MSNs associated with reward, reinstatement, and withdrawal.