Of Mice and Men: a cross-species measure of impulsivity

Within this project, we aim to investigate how impulsivity correlates with multimodal sensory evidence integration, to gain insights in the neural mechanisms behind impulsivity in patients with disorders characterized by impaired impulse control, more specifically in individuals with ADHD or disruptive behavioral discorders (DBD). We will compare behavioral results of human participants with ADHD or DBD with typically developing control participants performing a sensory decision-making task, as well as with behavioral and neurophysiological data from mice performing the same task. The results will reveal whether impaired impulse control is related to impaired sensory processing and will validate whether the behavioral outcome parameters of our paradigm can be used to ascertain severity of impulsivity and to study impact of treatment in clinical settings. A budget is requested for a research assistant to help conduct the experiments, as well as equipment for the neurophysiological experiments in mice, participant reimbursements and fees for open access publication of our results. The projects benefits the CIA and Amsterdam Neuroscience by its focus on a key topic within the CIA community, i.e. impulsivity, as well as by starting an ongoing collaboration between two groups from highly different disciplines and institutes, and by helping two starting group leaders further develop their research lines.