• 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.

• Loney GC, Meyer PJ (2018) Brief exposures to the taste of ethanol and quinine promote subsequent acceptance of ethanol in a paradigm that minimizes post-ingestive consequences. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. Mar;42(3):589-602
• King CP, Militello L, Hart A, St Pierre CL, Leung E, Catlin J, Roberson NP, Versaggi CL, Palmer AA, Richards JB, Meyer PJ (2017) “Cdh13 and AdipoQ gene knockout alters instrumental and Pavlovian drug conditioning” Genes, Brain, & Behavior. Sep;16(7):686-698
• Tripi JA, Dent MD, Meyer PJ (2017) “Individual differences in food-cue responsivity are associated with cocaine-induced ultrasonic vocalizations” Psychopharmacology 234(3): 437-446
• Ahrens AM, Meyer PJ, Ferguson LF, Robinson TE, Aldridge JW (2016) “Neural activity in the ventral pallidum encodes variation in the incentive value of a reward cue” Journal of Neuroscience 36(30):7957-7970
• Versaggi CL, King CP, & Meyer PJ (2016) “The tendency to sign-track predicts cue-induced reinstatement during nicotine self-administration, and is enhanced by nicotine but not ethanol” Psychopharmacology 233(15-16):2985-97