Anna Konova
Department of Psychiatry, UBHC & Brain Health Institute
Rutgers University
Join us in the SAIL Room (111 Levin) to watch the Zoom seminar together, or join us virtually via Zoom.
If you can join us in person and would like a to-go sandwich after the seminar, please register by Wednesday 2/23 at 12pm.
Addiction states as dynamic changes in valuation
Drug addiction is a canonical disorder of value and choice. Neuroeconomics has provided a rich framework for studying addiction in both humans and other animals. However, this work has generally considered addiction as a static entity. Less emphasis has been placed on isolating what changes underlie addiction’s most elusive (and perhaps most defining) feature – its stereotyped, cyclic nature at the level of the individual, characterized by alternating periods of abstinence and drug use. I will discuss work in which we aim to better understand these dynamic processes at the transition between abstinence and relapse to drug use. Understanding these addiction states as dynamic changes in valuation, we hope, can help identify when additional therapeutic intervention is needed on a timescale that is clinically useful as well as motivate the development of new decision- and valuation-based interventions for breaking the cycle of addiction.