Anel Jaramillo, Ph.D

Assistant Professor

Dr. Anel A. Jaramillo (hear my name) is a neuroscientist with expertise in the neurobiological mechanisms driving emotional affect and dysregulation in psychiatric diseases, specifically alcohol use and mood disorders.

Dr. Jaramillo acquired a strong grounding in rodent models of operant behavior from her graduate training with Dr. Joyce Besheer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her Ph.D. in Neuroscience, awarded in 2017, contributed to our understanding of the behavioral and circuit mechanisms responsible for alcohol-induced subjective/interoceptive effects on alcohol intake. As a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Danny G. Winder’s lab at Vanderbilt University, she gained expertise using in vivo and ex vivo techniques in transgenic mice to define cell-type and pathway-specific circuits. Her work demonstrated functional changes in circuit activity in vivo during anxiety-like behavior, with implications for female-specific differences.

Jaramillo’s lab and NIAAA R00-funded projects aim to alleviate negative affective disturbances in abstinence by providing insight into novel peptide targets within neural pathways that will lead to better diagnostic tools and treatment options.

Google Scholar