Ralph DiLeone, PhD
Cards
About
Titles
Professor of Psychiatry and of Neuroscience
Deputy Director, Abraham Ribicoff Research Facilities, PsychiatryAppointments
Psychiatry
ProfessorPrimaryNeuroscience
ProfessorSecondary
Other Departments & Organizations
- Center for the Translational Neuroscience of Alcohol
- Connecticut Mental Health Center
- Diabetes Research Center
- DiLeone Lab
- Division of Molecular Psychiatry
- Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program
- Kavli Institute for Neuroscience
- Neuroscience
- Neuroscience Research Training Program (NRTP)
- Neuroscience Track
- Psychiatry
- Stress & Addiction Clinical Research Program
- Yale Combined Program in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS)
- Yale Stress Center
- Yale Ventures
Education & Training
- PhD
- Stanford University, Developmental Biology (1998)
- BA
- Skidmore College, Biology-Chemsitry (1992)
Research
Overview
Broadly, our research seeks to define the molecular and neural basis of behavior. Most of the work focused on neurocircuitry underlying responses to natural rewards (i.e. food) as well as drugs of abuse. We investigate the regulation and integration of these circuits with the longer term goal of understanding their relevance in disease, as well as the role that these circuits played in evolution. It is notable that the motivation to ingest food, though highly adaptive during most of our natural history, has proven to be incompatible with the current state of excess food supply. Similar circuits likely underlie our motivation for physical activity, including exercise. Understanding the motivational systems that control feeding and activity will give us insight into the molecular mechanisms of a complex behavior, and will ultimately serve to better define the etiology of obesity and eating disorders.
Our current translational studies on opioid use disorder are focused at evaluating specific therapeutics for their mechanisms as well as their efficacy in animal models of dependence and drug seeking.
Our experiments and progress depend upon our ability to effectively monitor and manipulate neurons within the adult brain. We are active in using viral and transgenic techniques for conditional genetic analysis of neural function and behavior. The lab also leverages conditional viral approaches to evaluate activity (via fiber photometry) or to manipulate (via optogenetics) specific circuits and neuronal types during behavior.