Kate Wassum, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychology. Her laboratory is aimed broadly at exposing the psychological processes and neural mechanisms that underlie appetitive associative learning, motivation, and decision-making. She uses a multidisciplinary approach combining behavioral procedures rooted in the rich traditions of learning theory with advanced systems neuroscience neural recording, interference, and/or molecular methods. All of her work is targeted at understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the maladaptive motivated behavior that marks diseases such as addiction, compulsive overeating, and depression.