ROBERT RANALDI

Title	Associate Professor
Area	Behavioral Neuroscience
Ph.D.	Queen’s University (Canada)
Office	200 Razran
E-mail	robert.ranaldi@qc.cuny.edu
Office Phone	718-997-3553
Website

Professional Activities:

Society Memberships:
    The Society for Neuroscience
    Association for Behavior Analysis
    Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society
    The International Brain Research Organization

Research Description:

Understanding the neural and environmental mechanisms of reward-related learning is central to understanding behavior in general and crucial to understanding psychopathologies like addiction, pathological impulsivity and depression. Thus, my research is aimed at delineating the environmental and neural mechanisms underlying reward-related learning, motivation and drug addiction. In my laboratory, we focus on (1) the neural and environmental mechanisms whereby goal-directed behavior is acquired and expressed and (2) the neural and environmental mechanisms underlying the acquisition, maintenance and reinstatement of drug-taking and drug-seeking. Several neural pathways have been implicated in reward-related learning and we currently are engaged in developing neural models that help us understand the neural plasticity occurring in specific regions of these pathways as a function of reward-related learning. Currently, the behavioral paradigms that we use include operant and classical conditioning (e.g., self-administration of drug or food) and the neuroscience techniques include psychopharmacology, neuropsychopharmacology and immunohistochemistry.

Selected Publications:

    Ranaldi, R., Kest, K., Zellner, M. and Hachimine-Semprebom, P. (in press). Environmental enrichment administered after establishment of cocaine self-administration reduces lever pressing in extinction and during a cocaine context renewal test. Behavioural Pharmacology.

    Ranaldi, R., Kest, K., Zellner, M., Lubelski, D., Muller, J. Cruz, I and Saliba, M. (2011). The effects of VTA NMDA receptor antagonism on reward-related learning and associated c-fos expression in forebrain. Behavioural Brain Research, 216, 424-432.

    Zellner, M.R. and Ranaldi, R. (2010). How conditioned stimuli acquire the ability to activate VTA dopamine cells: A proposed neurobiological component of reward-related learning. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 34, 769-780.

    Ranaldi, R., Egan, J., Kest, K., Fein, M. and Delamater, A.R. (2009). Repeated heroin in rats produces locomotor sensitization and enhances appetitive Pavlovian and instrumental learning involving food. Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 91(3), 351-357.