2020 D-SPAN Scholar F99 Phase

Sponsor: Jonathan Morrow | Co-Sponsor: Geoff Murphy

Entitled, "Elucidating the role of nucleus accumbens activity in the propensity to attribute incentive salience to reward cues”

For her dissertation, she is characterizing individual variation in electrophysiological properties and functional connectivity within reward pathways that may predispose some individuals toward addictive drug use and other pathological cue-motivated behaviors. Her long-term goals include leading her own research team to determine neurobiological processes that can make certain individuals more vulnerable or resilient to disorders of aberrant associative learning after early-life stress.