Guitart-Masip Team
The goal of our research is to better understand the processes underlying motivation and decision-making and to develop tests that can be used to phenotype heterogeneous populations of psychiatric patients with the goal to improve classification and treatment outcomes of psychiatric patients.
One line of our research focuses on understanding the role of the neuromodulator dopamine in motivational process and decision-making across the adult lifespan. We are currently developing a battery of tasks to behaviorally disentangle different aspects of the dopaminergic system such as reward learning and invigoration. We want to apply this battery to follow groups of patients over time and identify whether changes in clinical status relate to changes in the function of the dopaminergic system.
Another line focuses on understanding how the human brain encodes expectations about the world (prior beliefs) and how this information is combined with available information to guide decision-making. We are developing and validating a behavioral test to quantify these prior beliefs and will use fMRI to investigate how the brain encodes them. We will also test whether psychiatric patients hold distorted prior beliefs and whether these are changeable with psychotherapy.
Team members
Marc Guitart-Masip
Associate Professor, Team leaderTobias Granwald
PhD studentStepan Wenke
Research assistantMartin Nilsson
Research assistantFormer group members
- Amy Walsh
- Benjamin Garzon
- Lieke de Boer
Selected publications
* equally contributing authors
Dopamine and reward-related vigor in younger and older adults.
Hird EJ, Beierholm U, De Boer L, Axelsson J, Backman L, Guitart-Masip M
Neurobiol Aging 2022 Oct;118():34-43
Investigating associations of delay discounting with brain structure, working memory, and episodic memory.
Garzón B, Kurth-Nelson Z, Bäckman L, Nyberg L, Guitart-Masip M
Cereb Cortex 2023 Feb;33(5):1669-1678
Decision-making ability, psychopathology, and brain connectivity.
Moutoussis M, Garzón B, Neufeld S, Bach DR, Rigoli F, Goodyer I, Bullmore E, , Guitart-Masip M*, Dolan RJ*
Neuron 2021 Jun;109(12):2025-2040.e7
Role of dopamine and gray matter density in aging effects and individual differences of functional connectomes.
Garzón B, Lövdén M, de Boer L, Axelsson J, Riklund K, Bäckman L, Nyberg L, Guitart-Masip M
Brain Struct Funct 2021 Apr;226(3):743-758
Motivational learning biases are differentially modulated by genetic determinants of striatal and prefrontal dopamine function.
Richter A, de Boer L, Guitart-Masip M, Behnisch G, Seidenbecher CI, Schott BH
J Neural Transm (Vienna) 2021 Nov;128(11):1705-1720
Learning in anticipation of reward and punishment: perspectives across the human lifespan.
Betts MJ, Richter A, de Boer L, Tegelbeckers J, Perosa V, Baumann V, Chowdhury R, Dolan RJ, Seidenbecher C, Schott BH, Düzel E, Guitart-Masip M, Krauel K
Neurobiol Aging 2020 Dec;96():49-57
Corticostriatal White Matter Integrity and Dopamine D1 Receptor Availability Predict Age Differences in Prefrontal Value Signaling during Reward Learning.
de Boer L, Garzón B, Axelsson J, Riklund K, Nyberg L, Bäckman L, Guitart-Masip M
Cereb Cortex 2020 Sep;30(10):5270-5280
The Role of the Striatum in Learning to Orthogonalize Action and Valence: A Combined PET and 7 T MRI Aging Study.
Perosa V, de Boer L, Ziegler G, Apostolova I, Buchert R, Metzger C, Amthauer H, Guitart-Masip M, Düzel E, Betts MJ
Cereb Cortex 2020 May;30(5):3340-3351
Dorsal striatal dopamine D1 receptor availability predicts an instrumental bias in action learning.
de Boer L, Axelsson J, Chowdhury R, Riklund K, Dolan RJ, Nyberg L, Bäckman L, Guitart-Masip M
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2019 Jan;116(1):261-270
Attenuation of dopamine-modulated prefrontal value signals underlies probabilistic reward learning deficits in old age.
de Boer L, Axelsson J, Riklund K, Nyberg L, Dayan P, Bäckman L, Guitart-Masip M
Elife 2017 Sep;6():