Endowed chairs:
Researcher seeks key to why we’re drawn to what’s bad for us
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Researcher Gary Aston-Jones, the Medical University of South Carolina’s endowed chair in neurodegeneration, does through science what artists, writers and poets have sought to do for millennia: He tries to understand the underpinnings of motivation and why so many of us are drawn to that which is bad for us.
“Everything we do has some underlying motivation, but it’s a subject that’s very poorly understood,” Aston-Jones said shortly after the start of MUSC’s fall semester.
“I mean, think about it, something motivates you to eat a sandwich or go speak to someone or do whatever, but can you describe how that motivation worked in your brain and made you do what you did? Not really, and yet it’s a very important process. That question is really the basis for the kind of work I do.”
Aston-Jones joined MUSC on July 1, moving from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had served as a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of Penn’s laboratory for neuromodulation and behavior.
“A number of factors played a role in my choosing to come to MUSC,” he said. “One, of course, was the endowed chair program, and another, probably equally important, was the fact that the university already has a very strong neuroscience program, particularly in regard to addiction, which is one of my lines of work.
“Interaction with the researchers who were already here working in this area was a very big attraction, and then, of course, there’s Charleston itself. My wife just fell in love with it.”
Aston-Jones said one primary academic interest is motivational disorders, those disruptions of the mental state that play a role in everything from depression to addiction to obesity.
“Through animal studies we’ve learned a lot about why we do things that are bad for us, and a lot of it has to do with our normal reward systems and normal reactions to rewards being misdirected,” Aston-Jones said. “That same probably holds true for obesity, gambling and a host of other situations.
“What I’m very interested in now is exploring how motivation affects behavior in the most basic sense and how these motivations within the brain make contact with higher-level cognitive activity. I mean, we all know you learn better in school if you’re motivated, but why?”
Aston-Jones said he believes research by himself and others in his discipline will have a two-fold impact on economics. One of those is theoretical but the other, hopefully, will be much more tangible in the Lowcountry.
“On the theoretical level, I think our work is very relevant to a new field called neuroeconomics, attempting to understand the economic choices people make and how rational or irrational those choices are,” he said. “I mean, classical economists have always worked from the premise that economic man always acts in a predictably rational way, but the truth is, there are a number of factors that make economic man a myth, and one of them is the motivational factors we’ll be studying here.”
Aside from the theoretical, Aston-Jones predicted that the research by his department holds potential for a spin-off in the local business community.
“I think as the endowed chair program takes off at MUSC and the state’s other research universities, you’re going to see companies wanting to cluster or form around where the cutting-edge research is being done. That’s particularly true of pharmaceutical companies when it comes to the kind of research I do,” he said.
“Now the thing is, it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process. But I think by developing a stronger cadre of researchers in Charleston that are working in areas that interest pharmaceutical companies, you’re giving them greater motivation to come here,” he said.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
|
E-Mail This Article
Printer-Friendly Version