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Ryan Ward2

Email ryan.ward@otago.ac.nz
Tel 64 3 479 5660

Dr Ryan Ward received his PhD from Utah State University in 2008. His PhD research focused on how reinforcement variables such as rate and probability impacted attention and working memory in a visual discrimination procedure. This work was awarded the Basic Research Dissertation Award from Division 25 of the American Psychological Association in 2009.

He made the move to New York City to pursue post-doctoral training and research at Columbia University. His research in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience focused on behavioral and neurobiological characterisation of a transgenic mouse model of the negative and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. He and his colleagues discovered that the mice had impaired ability to use reward related information to adaptively guide choice behavior, a strikingly similar deficit to that reported in patients. For this work, Dr Ward was awarded the B.F. Skinner Foundation New Researcher Award from the American Psychological Association in 2012.

Ryan joined the Department of Psychology as a Lecturer in 2014. His current research is focused on understanding the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between motivation and cognition. He has published over 30 articles and book chapters, and his work has been funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health. He currently serves on the review board for the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, and has served as a reviewer for numerous other journals.

Teaching

  • PSYC439 Neurobiology and Behavioural Effects of Drugs

Research Interests

  • Behavioural neuroscience
  • Motivation, cognition, and their interaction
  • Temporal information processing

Find out more about Dr Ward's research interests

Publications

Parnaudeau, S., Taylor, K., Bolkan, S. S., Ward, R. D., Balsam, P. D., & Kellendonk, C. (2015). Mediodorsal thalamus hypofunction impairs flexible goal-directed behavior. Biological Psychiatry, 77(5), 445-453. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.03.020

Trifilieff, P., Feng, B., Urizar, E., Winiger, V., Ward, R. D., Taylor, K. M., … Javitch, J. A. (2013). Increasing dopamine D2 receptor expression in the adult nucleus accumbens enhances motivation. Molecular Psychiatry, 18(9), 1025-1033. doi: 10.1038/mp.2013.57

Jensen, G., Ward, R. D., & Balsam, P. D. (2013). Information: Theory, brain, and behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 100(3), 408-431. doi: 10.1002/jeab.49

Parnaudeau, S., O'Neill, P.-K., Bolkan, S. S., Ward, R. D., Abbas, A. I., Roth, B. L., … Kellendonk, C. (2013). Inhibition of mediodorsal thalamus disrupts thalamofrontal connectivity and cognition. Neuron, 77(6), 1151-1162. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.01.038

Ward, R., Gallistel, C. R., & Balsam, P. D. (2013). It's the information! Behavioural Processes, 95, (pp. 3-7). doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2013.01.005

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