Dana Small, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Yale School of Medicine and Director of the Modern Diet and Physiology Research Center, will be one of four presidential keynote lecturers for the Society for Neuroscience’s 2021 annual meeting.
Neuroscience 2021 will be held virtually from Nov. 8-11, with Preview Days taking place Nov. 3-7.
Small’s lecture, titled “Integration of Mind and Metabolism,” is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 11.
"The opportunity to address the Society for Neuroscience membership in the presidential lecture is the highlight of my career. I am deeply honored and humbled by the invitation," Small said.
Optimal decision making in a changing environment requires evidence accumulation. Typically, this evidence is amassed from the external environment. Within this framework, unconditioned rewards are encapsulated within the outcome of an action; for example, the consumption of the food and the oral sensation simultaneously evoked. In her lecture, Small will argue that evidence must also be accumulated from the internal milieu. More specifically, work from human and rodent models will be presented demonstrating that subliminal signals generated during nutrient digestion comprise the critical unconditioned stimulus driving food reinforcement.
Registration for Neuroscience 2021 is available online.