Anna B. Konova, Ph.D., New York University, is using her grant to conduct a study to help identify behavioral, neural, and circuit-level biomarkers of the craving state, which is a major impediment to recovery from opioid addiction. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brains of opioid-addicted patients, she will test the hypothesis that specific, quantifiable changes in the brain’s valuation system during craving influence the subjective valuation of opioids. Dr. Konova hopes that this research will inform the development of more targeted interventions to combat craving.

Anna completed her PhD in Integrative Neuroscience with Rita Z. Goldstein at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Stony Brook University. She was then a postdoctoral fellow with Paul W. Glimcher at the Center for Neural Science at NYU. At Rutgers, Anna directs the ADN Lab which studies the computational and neural basis of human decision making in health and addiction.