Gavan P. McNally

This study examines how basolateral amygdala neuron activity changes during punishment learning in mice, showing that punishment learning alters action-related activity to align with punisher-specific responses.

This study maps how punishment learning reorganizes brain networks across scales using combined whole-brain analysis and spatial transcriptomics.

This study shows that enkephalin released in the amygdala during fear learning suppresses dopamine release, thereby constraining fear memory formation.

This study shows that a dual GLP-1/FGF21 agonist reduces alcohol consumption and dopamine responses in mice by altering decision-making processes.

This study evaluates the effects of PF-05231023, an FGF21 analogue, on alcohol consumption and neuronal activity in the nucleus accumbens, showing reduced intake and altered neural responses.

This study shows that instrumental reward learning increases intrinsic excitability of BLA projection neurons, while punishment training maintains excitability and response-independent shocks reverse it.

This study identifies state- and circuit-dependent opponent processing of fear in rats, showing that BLA pathways to CeA and Acb have opposing roles in fear learning.

This study shows that optogenetic activation of hypothalamic CRH neurons increases stress-related behaviors and reduces sucrose motivation, suggesting a role for these neurons in motivational drive.

The paper shows mice trade off decision speed for safety during approach-avoidance decisions under danger by adjusting activity in the paraventricular thalamus and prefrontal cortex.

This study shows that punishment learning involves aversion coding in the basolateral amygdala, and benzodiazepines reduce punishment by reverting this aversion coding.

The paper identifies punishment insensitivity in humans as resulting from deficits in instrumental contingency learning, similar to findings in non-human animals.

This study shows that optogenetic inhibition of VTA dopamine neurons suppresses instrumental responding in a response-specific and contingency-sensitive manner, acting as an instrumental punisher.

This paper identifies the BLA[->]AcbSh pathway as critical for transitioning between appetitive seeking and consummatory behaviors in rats, showing it actively inhibits seeking during reward consumption.

The paper shows BLA PV interneurons report aversive prediction error and limit fear learning, while projection neurons form fear associations.

The paper identifies mesolimbic dopamine signatures associated with different forms of alcohol-seeking relapse using photometry and dissimilarity matrices.

This study investigates how ventral striatopallidal neurons modulate orexin/hypocretin neuron activity in response to food and metabolic states, revealing their role in reward-seeking behavior.

The paper investigates how different ventral pallidum cell types and their projections contribute to relapse to alcohol-seeking in rats, identifying distinct roles for Gad1 and PV neurons.

The paper shows punishment insensitivity in rats is due to impaired instrumental control, not aversion sensitivity or reward dominance.

This study inhibits rat lateral and ventrolateral periaqueductal gray neurons during fear conditioning and finds it enhances fear learning and defensive responses.

The paper shows that inhibiting BLA glutamatergic neurons during reinforcement or non-reinforcement reduces conditioned stimulus salience, affecting fear learning and behavior.