About

The Division of Behavioral Medicine & Neurosciences at Duke University conducts research focused on understanding, preventing, and treating disease through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates behavioral, psychosocial, and biomedical sciences. Behavioral medicine research aims to develop and implement innovative behavioral interventions that combine research, cutting-edge technology, and clinical practices to promote healthy lifestyles, prevent disease, and reduce the impact of chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular diseases, pain syndromes, diabetes, and gastrointestinal disorders. Neuroscience research in this division concentrates on uncovering disease mechanisms, identifying novel biomarkers, and developing candidate treatments for central nervous system disorders, as well as translating high-impact discoveries from the laboratory to clinical settings.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Machine Learning
• Artificial Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive psychology
• Data Mining
• Statistics
• Data science
• Physical medicine and rehabilitation
• Medicine
• Mathematics
• Communication
• Psychiatry

Selected publications

• From error to exploration: Curiosity and Prediction error interact to promote lasting learning

  2026-05-08

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Motivation as Neural Context for Adaptive Learning and Memory Formation

  Annual Review of Psychology · 2025-10-07

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Our memories shape our perception of the world and guide adaptive behavior. Rather than being a veridical record of experiences, memory is selective. An accumulating body of work suggests that motivational states, emerging from the interplay between internal and external demands, play a critical role in determining what information is encoded in memory and how. Central to the regulation of motivational states are dopaminergic and noradrenergic neuromodulatory systems that can coordinate brain activity to determine how information is propagated, shaping memory outcomes. In this review, we propose that motivational states supported by the dopaminergic ventral tegmental area would facilitate the formation of flexible associative memory, while the noradrenergic locus coeruleus would facilitate unitized goal-relevant memory. By considering how neuromodulatory systems can support different neural contexts, we aim to explain how motivation enables an adaptive memory system, and in bridging motivation and memory, we aim to offer a framework for insights applicable to education and clinical practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Interactions between memory and reward systems

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-11-13 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Learning emotion regulation: An integrative framework.

  Psychological Review · 2024-09-19 · 18 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Improving emotion regulation abilities, a process that requires learning, can enhance psychological well-being and mental health. Empirical evidence suggests that emotion regulation can be learned-during development and the lifespan, and most explicitly in psychotherapeutic interventions and experimental training paradigms. There is little work however that directly addresses such learning mechanisms. The present article proposes that learning in specific components of emotion regulation-emotion goals, emotional awareness, and strategy selection-may drive skill learning and long-term changes in regulatory behavior. Associative learning (classical and instrumental conditioning) and social learning (including observational, instructed, or interpersonal emotion regulation processes) are proposed to function as underlying mechanisms, while reinforcement-learning models may be useful for quantifying how these learning systems operate. A framework for how people learn emotion regulation will guide basic science investigations and impact clinical interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• First impressions or good endings? Preferences depend on when you ask.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2024-09-09 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  . (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Memory and belief updating following complete and partial reminders of fake news

  Cognitive Research Principles and Implications · 2024-05-07 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Fake news can have enduring effects on memory and beliefs. An ongoing theoretical debate has investigated whether corrections (fact-checks) should include reminders of fake news. The familiarity backfire account proposes that reminders hinder correction (increasing interference), whereas integration-based accounts argue that reminders facilitate correction (promoting memory integration). In three experiments, we examined how different types of corrections influenced memory for and belief in news headlines. In the exposure phase, participants viewed real and fake news headlines. In the correction phase, participants viewed reminders of fake news that either reiterated the false details (complete) or prompted recall of missing false details (partial); reminders were followed by fact-checked headlines correcting the false details. Both reminder types led to proactive interference in memory for corrected details, but complete reminders produced less interference than partial reminders (Experiment 1). However, when participants had fewer initial exposures to fake news and experienced a delay between exposure and correction, this effect was reversed; partial reminders led to proactive facilitation, enhancing correction (Experiment 2). This effect occurred regardless of the delay before correction (Experiment 3), suggesting that the effects of partial reminders depend on the number of prior fake news exposures. In all experiments, memory and perceived accuracy were better when fake news and corrections were recollected, implicating a critical role for integrative encoding. Overall, we show that when memories of fake news are weak or less accessible, partial reminders are more effective for correction; when memories of fake news are stronger or more accessible, complete reminders are preferable.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Communicating COVID-19 exposure risk with an interactive website counteracts risk misestimation

  PLoS ONE · 2023-10-05 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  During the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals depended on risk information to make decisions about everyday behaviors and public policy. Here, we assessed whether an interactive website influenced individuals' risk tolerance to support public health goals. We collected data from 11,169 unique users who engaged with the online COVID-19 Event Risk Tool (https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/) between 9/22/21 and 1/22/22. The website featured interactive elements, including a dynamic risk map, survey questions, and a risk quiz with accuracy feedback. After learning about the risk of COVID-19 exposure, participants reported being less willing to participate in events that could spread COVID-19, especially for high-risk large events. We also uncovered a bias in risk estimation: Participants tended to overestimate the risk of small events but underestimate the risk of large events. Importantly, even participants who voluntarily sought information about COVID risks tended to misestimate exposure risk, demonstrating the need for intervention. Participants from liberal-leaning counties were more likely to use the website tools and more responsive to feedback about risk misestimation, indicating that political partisanship influences how individuals seek and engage with COVID-19 information. Lastly, we explored temporal dynamics and found that user engagement and risk estimation fluctuated over the course of the Omicron variant outbreak. Overall, we report an effective large-scale method for communicating viral exposure risk; our findings are relevant to broader research on risk communication, epidemiological modeling, and risky decision-making.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dataset: Pausing to Reflect During News Consumption Counteracts Negativity Biases in Memory

  Open MIND · 2023-01-01

  otherSenior author

  News sources often emphasize negative information, which can harm mood, memory, and mental health. Here, in a study of information seeking and memory conducted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we tested an intervention to counter these harms. Participants (N=260) completed a naturalistic information-seeking task, exploring articles in a virtual Newsroom. In the Reflection condition, participants were prompted to pause and reflect on how information made them feel, whereas participants in the No-Reflection condition browsed uninterrupted. On a subsequent memory test, No-Reflection participants were biased to remember negative information and forget positive information, especially when information was surprising or participants were in a negative mood. Crucially, our reflection intervention reduced this negativity bias in memory. Reflection participants showed better memory for positive information, especially if surprising. Overall, we found that a simple intervention—pausing to reflect while reading news—restored balance between positive and negative information in memory.

  Publisher

• Toward an integrative account of internal and external determinants of event segmentation

  Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · 2023-09-12 · 37 citations

  review
  PublisherDOI

• Curiosity evolves as information unfolds

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-10-16 · 23 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  When people feel curious, they often seek information to resolve their curiosity. Reaching resolution, however, does not always occur in a single step but instead may follow the accumulation of information over time. Here, we investigated changes in curiosity over a dynamic information-gathering process and how these changes related to affective and cognitive states as well as behavior. Human participants performed an Evolving Line Drawing Task, during which they reported guesses about the drawings' identities and made choices about whether to keep watching. In Study 1, the timing of choices was predetermined and externally imposed, while in Study 2, participants had agency in the timing of guesses and choices. Using this dynamic paradigm, we found that even within a single information-gathering episode, curiosity evolved in concert with other emotional states and with confidence. In both studies, we showed that the relationship between curiosity and confidence depended on stimulus entropy (unique guesses across participants) and on guess accuracy. We demonstrated that curiosity is multifaceted and can be experienced as either positive or negative depending on the state of information gathering. Critically, even when given the choice to alleviate uncertainty immediately (i.e., view a spoiler), higher curiosity promoted continuing to engage in the information-gathering process. Collectively, we show that curiosity changes over information accumulation to drive engagement with external stimuli, rather than to shortcut the path to resolution, highlighting the value inherent in the process of discovery.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01MH094743

  NIH · $2.3M · 2017

Frequent coauthors

• Stephen J. Wood

  29 shared

• Jimmy Lee

  28 shared

• Michael W.L. Chee

  National University of Singapore

  28 shared

• Kathryn C. Dickerson

  University of Regina

  26 shared

• Richard S.E. Keefe

  Duke Medical Center

  26 shared

• Joann S. Poh

  Singapore General Hospital

  26 shared

• Alyssa H. Sinclair

  25 shared

• Ranga Krishnan

  Rush University

  23 shared

Labs

• Neurobiology Training ProgramPI