Melissa Warden, Ph.D.

Dr. Warden’s research focuses on understanding the neural circuitry underlying complex cognition and behavior, with a focus on systems mediating reward and motivation. Her lab is interested in both the normal function of these circuits and how they become dysfunctional in depression. The primary goal of her current research is to determine how neural signals reflecting reward and motivation are constructed and used to control affective state and behavior.

Her lab investigates these fundamental questions by perturbing selected circuits and observing the effects on both neural activity and behavior. Using this approach, the goal is to shed light on both the normal function of these systems and how dysfunction in information flow contributes to disease states such as depression. In pursuit of these goals, the lab employs a multidisciplinary approach combining optogenetics, imaging, high-density freely moving neurophysiology, patch clamp electrophysiology, behavior, and computation.

Dr. Warden received an A.B. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Systems Neuroscience from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she investigated prefrontal neuronal encoding of multi-item short-term memory with Earl K. Miller. As a postdoctoral fellow with Karl Deisseroth at Stanford University, she studied cortical control of neuromodulatory systems in motivated behavior.

Prior to joining the College, Dr. Warden was an Assistant Professor and Miriam M. Salpeter Fellow in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University.