Research Interests
The Giovanniello lab seeks to understand how we learn and make decisions. In particular, we are interested in how our brain controls these behaviors. The brain has two strategies for behavioral control: one goal-directed and one habitual. When we use a goal-directed strategy, we prospectively consider the consequences of our actions. This behavior is flexible to changing circumstances but is cognitively taxing. When we use a habitual strategy, we reflexively execute behaviors that have been successful in the past. Habits are more inflexible but save cognitive energy for other, more important tasks. We are interested in uncovering the neural circuits that control this transition from goal-directed to habitual behaviors and vice versa. We are also interested in how external factors, like chronic stress, drugs of abuse, and/or genetic alterations modulate the neural circuits that govern behavioral control. To do this, we combine behavioral paradigms for appetitive learning in mice with sophisticated systems neuroscience tools for imaging and manipulating neural activity. This includes optogenetics, chemogenetics, fiber photometry imaging, and single cell miniscope imaging. Our basic science work aims to lay the foundation for future studies into these mechanisms in the context of psychiatric conditions marked by maladaptive behavioral control, such as substance use disorders, autism, anxiety, and OCD.
Education
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, Neuroscience, University of California Los Angeles
- PhD, Biology/Neuroscience, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
- Sc.B., Human Biology, Brown University
Memberships
- Society for Neuroscience
- International Behavioral Neuroscience Society
- Pavlovian Society
Honors & Awards
- NIH Pathway to Independence Award K99/R00, NIMH
- A.P. Giannini Postdoctoral Fellowship
- UCLA Brain Research Institute Scheibel Distinguished Fellow in Neuroscience Award
- NIH NRSA F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship