Freya Marijatta

Freya completed her B.Sc. in Psychology at University College London. In 2017, Freya joined the one-year M.Sc. in Neuroscience program at the University of Oxford, during which she worked with Dr. Mark Walton on a project examining the effect of background reward rate on learned Pavlovian behaviours and dopaminergic activity, implementing a novel behavioural task and making photometric recordings of dopaminergic neurons. In 2018, Freya joined the Unit as an MRC-funded D.Phil. student under the joint supervision of Professor Peter J. Magill and Dr. Mark Walton.

Freya’s D.Phil. thesis research is focused on elucidating how the activity of midbrain dopamine neurons impacts on their neuronal targets in the striatum to govern purposeful behaviour. To achieve this, Freya is using a combination of in vivo electrophysiology, fast-scan cyclic voltammetry, and optogenetics, together with behavioural analyses and computational methods.