About the group
Electrical and chemical signals in the physical brain give rise to experiences such as the pleasure we experience when we take a sip of wine or reunite with our loved ones. But how this happens is still poorly understood.
L.A.B. lab uses cognitive, social and affective neuroscience methods to probe the hedonic brain. Most of our work involves drugs: we study the effects of medications that bind to receptors in the brain. Using drugs that activate of block opioid receptors, we map out the functions of the brain’s own opioid system (‘endorphins’) and the effects of commonly used opioid analgesics. We believe that understanding how the healthy human brain encodes subjective and objective value is crucial for improving treatment of e.g. substance use disorder and chronic pain.
Much of our work is translational, aiming to fill the knowledge gap between rodent models and patient studies. Increasingly, we also study effects of medication use in different clinical populations. These pages aim to provide a brief overview of our work, introducing people, projects, methodology and PDFs of all our publications.
Projects
Brain processes of reward and decision making: stress and drug effects
In this project, we hypothesise that addictive drugs have different mechanisms of action depending on how one is feeling before taking the drug. Negative feelings and a wish for relief could underpin the increased risk of addiction observed in people suffering from depression, anxiety, a history of childhood trauma, and poor social support networks. We also investigate the role of the endogenous opioid system (which uses for instance endorphins as signal transmitters) in stress responses and their modulation.
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Read more about participation (in Norwegian)