By invitation of the American Psychological Society (APA) and Stand for Science (part of the APA’s Science Directorate), Jeremy Clark and his postdoctoral fellow Abigail Schindler recently met with U.S. House of Representative Jim McDermott’s (WA-D) office. Drs. Clark and Schindler discussed the need to “Stand for Science” by actively advocating for policy decisions that advance and preserve the infrastructure of social, behavioral and psychological science including providing predictable and steady spending increases for scientific agencies, ending sequestration, and ensuring that the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act supports merit review and does not cut the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate.

Drs. Clark and Schindler also spoke about the mission of our department as well as the current and future work of the Clark Lab within the Neurosciences Division, including their recent work published in The Journal of Neuroscience. As described in the paper, the lab identified a selective disruption in dopamine network dynamics that may promote persistent and poor decision-making after chronic adolescent alcohol use, even after periods of prolonged abstinence. Perhaps most exciting, they also demonstrated a pharmacological reversal of the disruption in adulthood. Together, these results highlight a novel neural mechanism underlying heightened risk-taking behavior in alcohol-dependent individuals and provide a potential therapeutic target for further investigation.