Katherine Bruce
University of North Carolina Wilmington, NC·Psychology
People do not crave drugs only because of direct experience with them. Words, symbols and learned links between ideas also shape how cues gain or lose value in addiction, and this can drive use and relapse.
- Fields
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
substance use disorders
addiction
relapse
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Test whether pairing a new odor with one member of a rat odor equivalence class makes it related to all class members without direct training. This is class expansion, a property readily seen in humans.
- Determine whether a newly trained instrumental response, an action performed for reward, transfers across all members of an odor equivalence class in rats, as it does in humans.
- Test whether a Pavlovian conditioned response transfers across class members, measured with a cue-induced reinstatement paradigm that models relapse to drug seeking.
- Examine, as a proof of concept, whether an odor preference created by pairing one odor with morphine spreads to the other odors in its equivalence class.
More about the research
These symbolic processes are hard to study because few animal models exist for them. This project, led jointly with Dr. Galizio, develops a rat model of symbolic learning. Its goal is to see whether that learning works like human symbolic categories and whether it bears on substance use disorders (SUDs).
Why it matters
If rats form symbol-like categories, researchers could study how learned symbolic associations contribute to the start, persistence and relapse of substance use disorders. They could do the same for other mental health disorders. A validated model could eventually inform new approaches to treating addiction that target how drug-related cues spread their influence through learned associations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Catherine Cahill
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Neuroscience
Determine whether the dynorphin–kappa opioid receptor system in the central amygdala is necessary and sufficient for negative reinforcement, meaning opioid taking to relieve a negative state, in mouse models of chronic pain.
Rebecca Hofford
Wake Forest University, NC·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test how depleting the gut microbiome in adolescent versus adult mice changes fentanyl self-administration, a measure of how strongly the drug reinforces drug-taking.
Congcong He
Northwestern University, IL·Neuroscience
Determine how Becn2 (Beclin 2) acting in dopamine neurons controls learning to take cocaine, dose response and reinstatement of cocaine seeking in mice, using knockout mice that lack Becn2 only in dopamine neurons.
The school
University of North Carolina Wilmington: 2 labs on PI Pages, $23M a year on research, 35 research doctorates a year.
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