lavanya-vijayaraghavanuiowaedu

Department
Psychiatry

Lab
Sergio Paradiso

Research Interests

I am interested in how the basal ganglia subserve motivation in humans. Based on Robinson & Berridge's groundbreaking work in animals, I have developed a novel behavioural task that attempts to parse motivation into two important components. These are incentive motivation, i.e, or the vigour and persistance of goal-directed behaviour ('WANTING') and hedonic evaluation, i.e., experience of pleasure ('LIKING'). I am using this task to evaluate motivational changes in depression, that have been linked to basal ganglia dysfunction. I am also interested in the effect of age of onset of depression: people who develop depression late in life report more apathy than people with depression since adolescence. In the future, I would like to investigate:

a) the neural areas recruited when performing my task, using fMRI

b) the effect of dopaminergic medication on task performance in depression.

Living in Iowa City

The Neuroscience Program at the University of Iowa exposes students to all levels of neuroscience research, from the gene to the brain. This is important as research often necessitates specialization, which can sometimes lead to a loss of a wider perspective. The faculty are respected in their fields and do very interesting work. The Student Advisory Committee is extremely supportive of students in the program. I am particularly lucky in having a great mentor, Dr Paradiso and a thesis committee of highly talented and inspiring individuals.