Psychology Colloquium: Dr Christina Perry (Macquarie University)

Dr Christina Perry (Macquarie University)Title: “Incubation of Craving” – investigating changes to brain and behaviour during alcohol abstinence in rats
Abstract: Alcohol-associated cues can produce intense craving in people with alcohol use disorder, which in turn can lead to relapse. Such cues may come in the form of advertising, places where a person used to drink, or indeed any environmental stimulus that may have been present during prior drinking.  These episodes of cue-driven craving are reported to increase in intensity over the first months of abstinence, a phenomenon termed “incubation of craving”. Neural mechanisms of incubation have been reasonably well-researched in rodent models of psychostimulant drug relapse, however almost no studies have looked at this in the context of alcohol. Our research seeks to meet this gap by training rats to lever press for alcohol, and then measuring changes in cue-induced relapse to alcohol-seeking across a four week abstinence period. We have conducted whole-brain analysis of neural activation and preliminary neural tract tracing, as well investigating the psychological mechanism for the time-dependent increase in alcohol-seeking. In addition, we are researching ways of reducing the increase in relapse propensity, including through voluntary wheel-running exercise. The aim of this project is to be able to identify risk factors for relapse following intervention for alcohol use disorder, as well as develop long-term strategies to reduce this risk.
Bio: Christina Perry is a senior lecturer and research fellow at Macquarie University. She completed my PhD in Behavioural Neuroscience at the University of New South Wales, before moving 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. Her primary research interest has always been addiction, particularly why relapse is such a pervasive problem for substance use disorders. In 2015 she was awarded an early career fellowship from the Society for Mental Health Research, then in 2016 a dementia research development fellowship from NHMRC/ARC. These allowed her to develop an independent 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. In 2021, she moved back to Sydney, to work with Prof. Jen Cornish at Macquarie University. She currently leads two major government-funded projects that seek to understand the neurobiology of substance use disorder, and of regulation of defensive responses.  Her research uses complex behavioural paradigms combined with sophisticated neuroscience techniques to understand the biological basis of motivated behaviour.