WFU Psychology

Wayne Pratt

Education

	B.A., University of Vermont, 1994
	M.S. University of Utah, 1997
	Ph.D. University of Utah, 2002

Major Area:  

Behavioral Neuroscience

Research Interests:

My research interests are predominantly centered upon studying the neural substrates underlying learning, memory, and motivation. My particular focus has been in attempting to understand how the brain encodes natural rewards, how those rewards are signaled and communicated between brain regions, and how they assist in selecting adaptive behaviors based on motivation and reinforcement history. In particular, I am interested in how neural circuits which sense the need for food (i.e., hunger) interact with the brain regions involved in learning about and directing behavior.

The hypothalamus and its related neural structures have been shown to be directly involved in the regulation of food intake and energy expenditure in mammals. Some nuclei of the hypothalamus have intricate connections with the basal ganglia, a group of brain regions that direct voluntary behavior and have been heavily implicated in drug addiction. By using the rat as an experimental model, and employing behavioral pharmacological and immunohistochemical techniques, I attempt to address how these systems interact to direct motivated behavior. Most recently, I have been examining the functional role of striatal acetylcholine and its interaction with endogenous opioids in modulating food-motivated behaviors.

Selected Publications:

	Will, M.J., Pratt, W.E., & Kelley, A.E. (in press). Pharmacological characterization of high-fat feeding induced by opioid stimulation of the ventral striatum. Physiology and Behavior.
	Pratt, W.E., & Kelley, A.E. (2005). Striatal muscarinic receptor antagonism reduces 24-h food intake in association with decreased preproenkephalin gene expression. European Journal of Neuroscience 22(12), 3229-3240.
	Kelley, A.E., Baldo, B.A., & Pratt, W.E. (2005). A proposed hypothalamic-thalamic-striatal axis for the integration of energy balance, arousal, and food reward. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493(1), 72-85.
	Pratt, W.E., & Kelley, A.E. (2004). Nucleus accumbens acetylcholine regulates appetitive learning and motivation for food via activation of muscarinic receptors. Behavioral Neuroscience, 118(4), 730-739.
	Pratt, W.E., & Mizumori, S.J. (2001). Neurons in rat medial prefrontal cortex show anticipatory rate changes to predictable differential rewards in a spatial memory task. Behavioural Brain Research, 123(2), 165-183.
	Mizumori, S.J., Cooper, B.G., Leutgeb, S., & Pratt, W.E. (2000). A neural systems analysis of adaptive navigation. Molecular Neurobiology, 21(1-2), 57-82.

Courses taught: