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Catherine Cahill, Ph.D.

Catherine Cahill, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Faculty Member

Biography

Catherine M. Cahill, Ph.D. trained as an opioid neuropharmaoclogist at Dalhousie University, Canada receiving her PhD in 1996. She was recruited to the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care at University of California Irvine in 2012 from Queen’s University in Canada where she held a Canada Research Chair in Chronic Pain for 10 years. She moved to UCLA in 2017 and is now a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and a member of the Hatos Center for Neuropharmacology at the University of California Los Angeles.

She has more than 25 years experience in research that focuses on understanding mechanisms of chronic pain and opioid analgesia, tolerance, dependence and addiction. Her research spans both basic science and human research, which focuses on how chronic pain states modulate reward circuitry and changes dopaminergic transmission responsible for motivated behavior. A large emphasis of her research focuses on understanding the processes that influence the positive and negative reinforcement and changes in mesolimbic circuitry in order to identify novel treatment strategies for opioid dependence and chronic pain.

Dr. Cahill’s research is supported by the National Institutes of Drug abuse, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the National Institute of Aging, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the Department of Defense and the Shirley and Stefan Hatos Foundation.

Andrew M. Wikenheiser, Ph.D.

Andrew Wikenheiser, Ph.D.

Faculty Member

Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

 

8566 Pritzker Hall
502 Portola Plaza,
Los Angeles, CA 90095

 

Research Interests

Our lab studies how neural representations support behaviors like decision making. We approach this question by recording the electrical activity of neurons as rats perform behavioral tasks. Electrophysiological techniques are augmented with optogenetics and computational analyses. Current projects are exploring how interactions between the hippocampus and the orbitofrontal cortex support decision making, the encoding of spatial goals, and the formation of neural representations for abstract stimulus spaces.

 

Publications

A selected list of publications:
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Marrero-Garcia Yasmin, Schoenbaum Geoffrey   Suppression of Ventral Hippocampal Output Impairs Integrated Orbitofrontal Encoding of Task Structure Neuron, 2017; 95(5): 1197-1207.e3.
Langdon Angela J, Wikenheiser Andrew M, Schoenbaum Geoffrey   Rat mPFC and M2 Play a Waiting Game (at Different Timescales) Neuron, 2017; 94(4): 700-702.
Sadacca Brian F, Wikenheiser Andrew M, Schoenbaum Geoffrey   Toward a theoretical role for tonic norepinephrine in the orbitofrontal cortex in facilitating flexible learning Neuroscience, 2017; 345(4): 124-129.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Schoenbaum Geoffrey   Over the river, through the woods: cognitive maps in the hippocampus and orbitofrontal cortex Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 2016; 17(8): 513-23.
Sharpe Melissa J, Wikenheiser Andrew M, Niv Yael, Schoenbaum Geoffrey   The State of the Orbitofrontal Cortex Neuron, 2015; 88(6): 1075-1077.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Redish A David   Decoding the cognitive map: ensemble hippocampal sequences and decision making Current opinion in neurobiology, 2015; 32(6): 8-15.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Redish A David   Hippocampal theta sequences reflect current goals Nature neuroscience, 2015; 18(2): 289-94.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Stephens David W, Redish A David   Subjective costs drive overly patient foraging strategies in rats on an intertemporal foraging task Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013; 110(20): 8308-13.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Redish A David   The balance of forward and backward hippocampal sequences shifts across behavioral states Hippocampus, 2013; 23(1): 22-9.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Redish A David   Hippocampal sequences link past, present, and future Trends in cognitive sciences, 2012; 16(7): 361-2.
Wikenheiser Andrew M, Redish A David   Changes in reward contingency modulate the trial-to-trial variability of hippocampal place cells Journal of neurophysiology, 2011; 106(2): 589-98.
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