Christina Perry

I obtained my PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience from the University of New South Wales. After this I moved to Melbourne to work as a post-doc in the Behavioural Neuroscience division at Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, working with Andrew Lawrence and Jee Hyun Kim. My primary research interest has always been addiction, particularly why relapse is such a pervasive problem for substance use disorders. During my PhD and first postdoc, I used animal models to characterise part of the circuitry that subserves inhibition and relapse to drug-seeking. In 2015 I was awarded an early career fellowship from the Society for Mental Health Research, then in 2016 I was awarded a dementia research development fellowship from NHMRC/ARC. These have allowed me to develop a new program of research, looking at how chronic alcohol use interacts with the normal cognitive changes that occur with ageing, and how this impacts on the prospect of rehabilitation. I am also interested in studying how the zona incerta is involved in extinction of conditioned fear.