Neuro scholars reap bounty for study on incentives

Peter Dayan, Ray Dolan and Wolfram Schultz, who all work in Britain, said they were surprised and delighted to receive the Brain Prize, which they said was a recognition of their persistent curiosity about how the human brain works. 

The scientists’ research, spanning almost 30 years, found that dopamine neurons are at the heart of the brain’s reward system, affecting behaviour in everything from decision-making, risk-taking and gambling, to drug addiction and schizophrenia. “This is the biological process that makes us want to buy a bigger car or house, or be promoted at work,” said Schultz, a German-born professor of neuroscience who now works at the University of Cambridge.

He said dopamine neurons are “like little devils in our brain that drive us towards more rewards”. Dayan, director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at University College London, added to Schultz’s findings with research showing how humans update and change their goals through a dopamine-driven system “reward prediction error.” 

He showed that our future behaviour is dictated by constant brain feedback on whether anticipated rewards are as expected, or better or worse than expected. The one million euro Brain Prize, given by the Lundbeck Foundation in Denmark, is awarded annually and recognises scientists for outstanding contribution to neuroscience.  Colin Blakemore, chairman of the selection committee, said the three scientists’ work had helped decipher the way people use and respond to rewards across many aspects of life. “The implications of these discoveries are extremely wide-ranging, in fields as diverse as economics, social science, drug addiction and psychiatry,” he said in a statement.