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Ryan Ward2

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

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Neurobiology of learning and adaptive behaviour

Learning is crucial to everything we do. Whether it’s basic associative learning, where we learn the relationships between stimuli and cues in our environment and consequences, or instrumental learning, where we learn the relationship between our own actions and consequences, learning impacts all areas of our lives. Basic learning is compromised in a number of psychiatric diagnoses. Ryan’s lab works to understand this problem on two fronts. First, he works to understand the basic neural processes underlying learning using a variety of behavioural and neurobiological methods and analyses. Second, he works to understand how specific risk factors for various psychiatric diseases (e.g., schizophrenia) compromise the psychological and learning processes that are crucial to adaptive behaviour. Ryan also works to develop and adapt animal models of aspects of psychiatric disease (such as psychosis) that have thus far proven difficult to model in animals. The hope is to develop truly translational models that can inform treatment strategies and programmes for people suffering with psychiatric diagnoses.

Motivations, experiences, and consequences of human drug taking

Humans have consumed drugs for millennia. The current drug landscape is heavily governed by the War on Drugs, which began in the early 1970s in the United States and has spread throughout the world. As a result of this approach, many drugs have been criminalised and driven underground. This has not stopped people from using drugs; all it has done is made their use more dangerous and less understood. Ryan’s lab works to understand drug use from the perspective of the users. Policy and ideological positions are often dictated by stereotypes of users, without considering the actual reasons why people use drugs and what strategies would result in safer, evidence-based drug policy. By surveying and conducting in-depth interviews with drug users throughout Aotearoa, Ryan’s lab hopes to get a better idea of the current drug-use landscape, including knowledge, and employment of harm-reduction strategies to hopefully inform the public perception and government debates surrounding drug policy.

Publications

Tashakori-Sabzevar, F., Munn, R. G. K., Bilkey, D. K., & Ward, R. D. (2024). Basal forebrain and prelimbic cortex connectivity is related to behavioral response in an attention task. iScience, 27, 109266. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109266 Journal - Research Article

Whelan, J., Noller, G., & Ward, R. D. (2024). Harm reduction behaviours and harm experiences of people who use 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Harm Reduction Journal, 21, 67. doi: 10.1186/s12954-024-00979-y Journal - Research Article

Whelan, J., Noller, G. E., & Ward, R. D. (2024). Rolling through TikTok: An analysis of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-related content. Drug & Alcohol Review, 43, 36-44. doi: 10.1111/dar.13640 Journal - Research Article

Deane, A. R., Jing, Y., Shoorangiz, R., Liu, P., & Ward, R. D. (2023). Cognitive and arginine metabolic correlates of temporal dysfunction in the MIA rat model of schizophrenia risk. Behavioral Neuroscience, 137(1), 67-77. doi: 10.1037/bne0000540 Journal - Research Article

Deane, A. R., & Ward, R. D. (2022). The instrumental role of operant paradigms in translational psychiatric research: Insights from a maternal immune activation model of schizophrenia risk. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 117, 560-575. doi: 10.1002/jeab.753 Journal - Research Other

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