We are honored to have recently been awarded a three-year Whitehall Foundation grant to look at the role of cholinergic signaling in the insular cortex on the attribution of incentive salience to food-associated cues.
The Loney Lab is recruiting new graduate students
We are currently looking to take on at least one new PhD student for the Fall of 2026.
Here is a LINK to the Department of Psychology’s graduate admissions page for all of the details about applying to the Behavioral Neuroscience program.
We look forward to working with you!
New Pub
Check out our new publication in Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior! Nicotine administration produces a rightward shift in the dose-response curve for opioids in Pavlovian conditioning procedures. Here we show that nicotine limits acquisition of morphine-induced CTA without affecting the ability to discriminate the morphine interoceptive state.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091305723000916
New Publication
Check out our new publication in ACER! Escalation of alcohol intake is correlated with a decrease in neural activity in the posterior insular cortex. Rats that have been exposed to alcohol report that they don’t find it to be as aversive and this is irrespective of any changes in the psychophysical taste properties of alcohol.
Check it out here:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/acer.15060?campaign=wolacceptedarticle