Education Ph.D. Psychology, Behavioral Neuroscience Program, 2000, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ M.A. Psychology, Behavioral Neuroscience Program, 1997, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ B.S. Psychology, 1993, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

Exposure to drug-associated environments (e.g., drug-taking neighborhood) and explicit drug-associated stimuli (e.g., paraphernalia) elicits craving and relapse to drug seeking. Research in our laboratory focuses on studying the neural mechanisms of environmentally-induced motivation to seek cocaine and attempts to address three important questions:  How does the brain regulate drug context-induced relapse to cocaine seeking? Can we disrupt the motivation for cocaine by preventing the reconsolidation of context-cocaine memories? Do brain damage-induced alterations in gene expression correlate with compulsive cocaine-seeking behavior? To learn more about us and our research, please click on the links on the left.