Under the supervision of Boris Gutkin, my PhD project aims at understanding the role of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) circuits in the generation of behavior. To do so, I use data from collaborators to model the activities of VTA dopamine and GABA neurons, as well as the supposed effects of dopamine on movements exerted by the animals during classical conditioning tasks. Once we have a working model, we plan on incorporating the effects of drugs in it, to simulate and better understand some pathologies like addiction or neurodegenerative disorders.
