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 Peter Dayan, Ray Dolan and Wolfram Schultz, who all work in Britain,
said they were surprised and delighted to receive the Brain Prize,
which they said was a recognition of their persistent curiosity
about how the human brain works.
The scientists' research, spanning almost 30 years, found that
dopamine neurons are at the heart of the brain's reward system,
affecting behavior in everything from decision-making, risk-taking
and gambling, to drug addiction and schizophrenia.
"This is the biological process that makes us want to buy a bigger
car or house, or be promoted at work," said Schultz, a German-born
professor of neuroscience who now works at the University of
Cambridge.
He said dopamine neurons are like "like little devils in our brain
that drive us towards more rewards".
Dayan, director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at
University College London, added to Schultz's findings with research
showing how humans update and change their goals through a
dopamine-driven system "reward prediction error".
He showed that our future behavior is dictated by constant brain
feedback on whether anticipated rewards are as expected, or better
or worse than expected.
The one million euro Brain Prize, given by the Lundbeck Foundation
in Denmark, is awarded annually and recognizes scientists for
outstanding contribution to neuroscience.
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Colin Blakemore, chairman of the selection committee, said the three
scientists' work had helped decipher the way people use and respond
to rewards across many aspects of life.
"The implications of these discoveries are extremely wide-ranging,
in fields as diverse as economics, social science, drug addiction
and psychiatry," he said in a statement.
Dolan, director of the new Max Planck Centre for Computational
Psychiatry and Ageing, and Dayan, cracked open a bottle of champagne
in London after being told of the prize.
Schultz described the news as a fantastic reward.
"I can hear our dopamine neurons jumping up and down," he said.
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
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