Lauren Mueller

Research Interests

Our lab and others have previously shown that dorsomedial striatal (DMS) cholinergic interneurons (CINs) are important for guiding situationally-appropriate behavior. Interestingly, CINs are activated by cocaine and are implicated in the regulation of extinction learning to cocaine-context associations. Thus, cocaine use may disrupt DMS CIN encoding of current state representations and lead to the situationally-inappropriate behavior commonly observed in sufferers of drug addiction. Currently, I am using in vivo electrophysiology during an odor-guided choice task to investigate how prior cocaine exposure alters state encoding in neuron populations within the striatum and cortical regions.