DARA G. GHAHREMANI, Ph.D.
I am currently assistant research faculty in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at the Center for Addictive Behaviors. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow in Russ Poldrack's Lab at UCLA. I received my PhD in the Neuroscience area in the Psychology Department at Stanford with John Gabrieli. Before coming to Stanford, I worked in Terry Sejnowski's Computational Neurobiology Lab at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies following my undergraduate education in Cognitive Science at UC San Diego.
My research is focused on cognitive flexibility and the neural processes that support it during learning. My studies focus on (1) how fronto-striatal circuits are involved in adaptively modifying previously learned behavior to meet current demands, (2) how different types of feedback influence learning via neural systems involved in memory and reward, such as basal ganglia subregions, and (3) how prefrontal and subcortical brain regions coordinate to support habit learning. I mainly use functional MRI along with various behavioral learning paradigms, including probabilistic classification learning and reversal learning tasks. Our findings support the notion that habit learning and its control involves the interaction of pre-frontal cognitive control mechanisms and feedback-sensitive subcortical circuitry. I am currently exploring the nature of these processes in chronic methamphetamine addiction, examining how "cognitive enhancing" medications can improve behavioral performance and neural processes compromised by long-term drug use.
