Taste compounds elicit innate feeding behaviors and act as rewards or punishments to entrain other cues. The neural pathways by which taste compounds influence innate and learned behaviors have not been resolved. Here, we identify three classes of taste projection neurons (TPNs) in Drosophila melanogaster distinguished by their morphology and taste selectivity. TPNs receive input from gustatory...

• EVIDENCE-BASED ANSWER Parent training is effective for treating oppositional and defiant behaviors (strength of recommendation [SOR]: A, based on systematic reviews). Parent training programs are standardized, short-term interventions that teach parents speciahzed strategies—^including positive attending, ignoring, the effective use of rewards and punishments, token economies, and time out— t̂...

Recent ethical failures at some large and once-respected organizations have affected the lives of many people and have illustrated that encouraging ethical behavior is of increasing importance. Ethical behavior on the part of authority figures encourages ethical behavior in subordinates. But codes of ethics must be enforced as well: ethical behavior must be rewarded, while unethical behavior mu...

Reward-based decision-learning refers to the process of learning to select those actions that lead to rewards while avoiding actions that lead to punishments. This process, known to rely on dopaminergic activity in striatal brain regions, is compromised in Parkinson's disease (PD). We hypothesized that such decision-learning deficits are alleviated by induced positive affect, which is thought t...

The development of the field of cognitive neuroscience has inspired a revival of interest in the brain mechanisms involved in the processing of rewards, punishments, and abstract performance feedback. One fruitful line of research in this area was initiated by the report of an electrophysiological brain potential in humans that was differentially sensitive to negative and positive performance f...

Cooperation among unrelated humans is frequently regarded as a defining feature in the evolutionary success of our species. Whereas, much research has addressed the strategic and cognitive mechanisms that underlie cooperation, investigations into chemosensory processes have received very limited research attention. To bridge that gap, we build on recent research that has identified the chemical...

The sanctioning of norm-transgressors is a necessary--though often costly--task for maintaining a well-functioning society. Prior to effective and reliable secular institutions for punishment, large-scale societies depended on individuals engaging in 'altruistic punishment'--bearing the costs of punishment individually, for the benefit of society. Evolutionary approaches to religion suggest tha...

Associative learning enables animals to anticipate the occurrence of important outcomes. Learning occurs when the actual outcome differs from the predicted outcome, resulting in a prediction error. Neurons in several brain structures appear to code prediction errors in relation to rewards, punishments, external stimuli, and behavioral reactions. In one form, dopamine neurons, norepinephrine neu...

Norms exist to avoid and solve conflicts, make agreements, reduce complexity, and in general to achieve a desirable social order. However, norms eventually can be conflicting — for example, when there is a norm that prohibits an agent to perform a particular action and another norm that obligates the same agent to perform the same action at the same period of time. The agent’ decision about whi...

An important component of decision making is evaluating the expected result of a choice, using past experience. The way past experience is used to predict future rewards and punishments can have profound effects on decision making. The aim of this study is to further understand the possible role played by the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in decision making, using results from the Iowa Gamblin...