Our work to understand maladaptive eating behavior uses a cognitive neuroscience approach to study the restrictive food choices that are a core disturbance in anorexia nervosa. In collaboration with experts in eating disorders, we developed a behavioral task that captures real-world maladaptive eating behavior, allowing us to study neural circuits supporting restrictive food choice. This approach has allowed us to link real-world maladaptive, restrictive eating behavior to fronto-striatal circuits critical for learning and decision-making.

Uncovering how and when distinct cognitive and neural processes are engaged, is a central challenge for cognitive and clinical neuroscience. We use behavioral and functional neuroimaging methods to uncover the distinct contributions of habitual vs. goal-directed (i.e., flexible) learning mechanisms to behavior. Through behavioral manipulations (e.g., cognitive load, timing of feedback) we find that different neural systems contributed to learning depending on available cognitive resources or learning conditions with consequences for the flexibility of learned behavior. We are particularly interested in the contributions of the striatum and hippocampus to distinct forms of learning and memory and, in addition to using fMRI, we study patients with Parkinson’s disease or medial temporal lobe damage.