Wolfram Schultz

Wolfram Schultz FRS
Alma mater	University of Heidelberg (MD) University of Fribourg (PhD)
Known for	research that demonstrates that dopamine neurons signal errors in reward prediction
Awards	Brain Prize, Golden Brain Award, Gruber Prize in Neuroscience, & Karl Spencer Lashley Award
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Cambridge
Website	www.wolframschultz.org

Wolfram Schultz FRS is a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge known for his discovery of the neurophysiological dopamine reward signal.

Life and career

Schultz received his medical degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1972 and his PhD (habilitation) in Physiology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He completed three postdoctoral research fellowships: with the neurophysiologist Otto Creutzfeld at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, Germany, the neurophysiologist John C. Eccles at State University of New York at Buffalo in the USA, and the neurohistologist and neuropsychopharmacist Urban Ungerstedt at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Schultz worked at the University of Fribourg from 1977 to 2001 and then moved to the University of Cambridge in 2001, where he is Professor of Neuroscience (and has been Wellcome Principal Research Fellow from 2001 to 2023).

Research

During the 1980s and 1990s, Schultz was experimenting with macaque monkeys when he found that dopamine neurons in their basal ganglia increased in activity after they were given a reward. This led to the discovery for which he is best known: dopamine neurons signal errors in reward prediction (the difference between the reward an animal expects and the reward it actually receives). He subsequently carried his work to the neuroeconomics of reward and decision-making, using concepts from economic choice theory and studying dopamine neurons, orbitofrontal cortex, striatum and amygdala.

Honours and awards

He won the Golden Brain Award in 2002, The Brain Prize in 2017, the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience in 2018, the Karl Spencer Lashley Award in 2019, and has an h-index of 101.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Member of the Academia Europaea and past president of the European Brain and Behaviour Society.

Selected publications

• Schultz W, Dayan P, Montague PR (1997). "A neural substrate of prediction and reward". Science. 275: 1593–1599. doi:10.1126/science.275.5306.1593. PMID 9054347.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Schultz W (1998). "Predictive reward signal of dopamine neurons". J Neurophysiol. 80: 1–27. doi:10.1152/jn.1998.80.1.1. PMID 9658025.
• Schultz W (2002). "Getting formal with dopamine and reward". Neuron. 36: 241–263. doi:10.1016/s0896-6273(02)00967-4. PMID 12383780.
• Schultz W (2015). "Neuronal reward and decision signals: from theories to data". Physiol Rev. 95: 853–951. doi:10.1152/physrev.00023.2014. PMC 4491543. PMID 26109341.