• PhD, Oregon Health & Science University

The overall research goal of my laboratory is to determine the precise role of the brain’s reward circuitry in appetitive learning and drug addiction, and how motivated behavior is controlled by reward‐associated stimuli (“cues”). To this end, my laboratory specializes in behavioral and in vivo neurophysiological techniques to study neural connections within reward‐related brain areas. Further, I am interested in how individual differences in the ability of cues to control motivated behavior are reflected by neural activity within this circuitry (specifically the ventral basal ganglia), and how genetic and environmental factors interact to influence the magnitude of these differences.

• King CP, Tripi JA, Hughson AR, Horvath AP, Lamparelli AC, Holl KL, Chitre AS, Polesskaya O, Richards JB, Solberg Woods LC, Palmer AA, Robinson TE, Flagel SB,Meyer PJ. Genetic Loci Influencing Cue-Reactivity in Heterogeneous Stock Rats. (2025) Genes Brain Behav. 24(2):e70018.
• Rakowski EA, King CP, Thompson BM, Santos G, Holmes E, Solberg Woods LC, Polesskaya O, Palmer AA, Meyer PJ. Dissociation of intake and incentive sensitization during intermittent- and continuous-access heroin self-administration in rats. (2025) Psychopharmacology. doi: 10.1007/s00213-025-06762-6. PMID: 39979648.
• Santhanam N, Sanchez-Roige S, Liang Y, Chitre AS, Munro D, Chen D, Cheng R, Nyasimi F, Perry M, Gao J, George AM, Gileta A, Holl K, Hughson A, King CP, Lamparelli AC, Martin CD, Martinez AG, Mi S, Pierre CLS, Tripi JA, Wang T, Chen H, Flagel S, Ishiwari K, Meyer PJ, Saba L, Solberg Woods LC, Polesskaya O, Palmer AA, Im HK. RatXcan: Framework for translating genetic results between species via transcriptome-wide association analyses. (2025) PLoS Genet. Mar 31;21(3):e1011583. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011583. PMID: 40163524; PMCID: PMC12052193.
• King CP, Chitre AS, Leal-Gutiérrez JD, Tripi JA, Hughson AR, Horvath AP, Lamparelli AC, George A, Martin C, Pierre CLS, Sanches T, Bimschleger HV, Gao J, Cheng R, Nguyen KM, Holl KL, Polesskaya O, Ishiwari K, Chen H, Woods LCS, Palmer AA, Robinson TE, Flagel SB, Meyer PJ (2024) Genomic Loci Influencing Cue-Reactivity in Heterogeneous Stock Rats. bioRxiv: 584852.
• Ishiwari K, King CP, Martin CD, Tripi JA, George AM, Lamparelli AC, Chitre AS, Polesskaya O, Richards JB, Solberg Woods LC, Gancarz AM, Palmer AA, Dietz DM, Mitchell SH, Meyer PJ (2024) Environmental enrichment promotes adaptive responding during tests of behavioral regulation in male heterogeneous stock rats. Scientific Reports 4:4182.
• Meyer PJ, Segal G. (2023) Editorial: The role of emotional dysregulation in addiction. Frontiers in Psychology 14:1253541.
• Gancarz AM, Mitchell SH, George AM, Martin CD, Turk MC, Bool HM, Aktar F, Kwarteng F, Palmer AA, Meyer PJ, Richards JB, Dietz DM, Ishiwari K. (2023) Reward Maximization Assessed Using a Sequential Patch Depletion Task in a Large Sample of Heterogeneous Stock Rats. Scientific Reports 13:7027.
• Wright SN, Leger BS, Rosenthal SB, Liu S, Tongqiu J, Chitre AS, Polesskaya O, Holl K, Gao J, Cheng R, Garcia Martinez A, George A, Gileta AF, Han W, Netzley AH, King CP, Lamparelli A, Martin C, St. Pierre CL, Wang T, Bimschleger H, Richards J, Ishiwari K, Chen H, Flagel SB, Meyer PJ, Robinson TE, Solberg Woods LC, Kreisberg JF, Ideker T, Palmer AA (2023) Genome-wide association studies of human and rat BMI converge on synapse, epigenome, and hormone signaling networks. Cell Reports 42: 112873.
• King CP, Meyer PJ (2022) The incentive amplifying effects of nicotine: Roles in alcohol seeking and consumption. Advances in Pharmacology 93: 171-218.
  
• Wakabayashi KT, Feja M, Leigh MPK, Baindur AN, Suarez M, Meyer PJ, Bass CE (2021) Chemogenetic activation of mesoaccumbal Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid projections selectively tunes responses to predictive cues when reward value is unexpectedly decreased. Biological Psychiatry 89: 366-375.
• Loney GC, King CP, Meyer PJ (2021) Systemic nicotine enhances opioid self-administration and modulates the formation of opioid-associated memories partly through actions within the insular cortex. Scientific Reports 11: 3321.
• King CP, Tripi JA, Hughson AR, Horvath AP, Lamparelli AC, Holl KL, Chitre AS, Polesskaya O, Richards JB, Solberg Woods LC, Palmer AA, Robinson TE, Flagel SB, Meyer PJ (2021) Sensitivity to food and cocaine cues are independent traits in a large sample of heterogeneous stock rats. Scientific Reports 11: 2223.
• Loney GC, Angelyn H, Meyer PJ (2019) Nicotine produces a high-approach, low-avoidance phenotype in response to alcohol-associated cues in male rats. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 43: 1284-1295.
• Loney GC, Meyer PJ (2019) Nicotine reduces the sensitivity to the interoceptive properties of commonly abused drugs as assessed with taste conditioning paradigms. Drug and Alcohol Dependence 194: 341-350.
• Pasquariello KP, Han M, Unal C, Meyer PJ (2018) Adrenergic manipulation inhibits Pavlovian conditioned Approach of incentive salience attribution to food cues. Behavioral Brain Research 339: 278-285.