Conscious awareness of others' actions during observational learning does not benefit motor skill performance.

The conscious awareness of motor success during motor learning has recently been revealed as a learning factor. In these studies, participants had to learn a motor sequence and to detect when they assumed the execution had reached a maximal fluidity. The consciousness groups showed better motor performance during a delayed post-training test than the non-consciousness control groups.

Attentional capacities prior to drug exposure predict motivation to self-administer nicotine.

Rationale: Nicotine can enhance attention and attribution of incentive salience to nicotine-associated stimuli. However, it is not clear whether inter-individual differences in attentional capacities prior to any exposure could play a role in vulnerability to nicotine self-administration. We further explored this vulnerability through pre-existing inter-individual differences in attention to a reward-predictive cue in drug-free animals.

Inter-individual differences in the impulsive/compulsive dimension: deciphering related dopaminergic and serotonergic metabolisms at rest.

Several impulse control disorders such as ADHD, mania, personality disorders or substance abuse share common behavioural traits, like impulsiveness, risk-taking or inflexible behaviour. These disorders are treated with drugs targeting dopamine (DA) and/or serotonin (5-HT). However, the patient's monoamine imbalance that these neurotransmitters compensate is unclear.

Inter-individual differences in decision-making, flexible and goal-directed behaviors: novel insights within the prefronto-striatal networks.

Inflexible behavior is a hallmark of several decision-making-related disorders such as ADHD and addiction. As in humans, a subset of healthy rats makes poor decisions and prefers immediate larger rewards despite suffering large losses in a rat gambling task (RGT). They also display a combination of traits reminiscent of addiction, notably inflexible behavior and perseverative responses.

Correlative analysis of dopaminergic and serotonergic metabolism across the brain to study monoaminergic function and interaction.

Background: The widespread innervation of dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT) systems in cortical and subcortical regions suggests that their biochemical interactions can occur in multiple regions directly or indirectly via neurobiological networks.

New Method: The present study was aimed at validating a neurochemical approach of monoaminergic function based on inter-individual variability of monoamine tissue contents in various cortical and subcortical areas. We focused on monoamines metabolism and examined correlations within and between these monoaminergic systems in selected regions for the metabolites 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and/or homovanillic acid (HVA) and 5-hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA) alone or with respect to the turnover indexes DOPAC/DA, DOPAC+HVA/DA and 5-HIAA/5-HT.