Don C. Cooper
Associate Professor
University of Colorado, USA
USA
Biography
Don Cooper, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Chicago Medical School in 2000. He moved to Northwestern University in the Dept of Neurobiology and Physiology for postdoctoral training until 2004. In 2004, he moved to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, as an Assistant Professor in the Dept of Psychiatry. In 2009, he moved to the University of Colorado, Institute for Behavioral Genetics. Dr. Cooper is the recipient of an NIH career award to investigate gene expression in cocaine addiction. His laboratory is funded by the NIH to study Ecstasy and cocaine in the brain memory and reward system. He is a member of a number of professional organizations in neuroscience. He has served as an ad hoc member of a number of committees for the National Institutes of Health and chair of the National Academy of Science Kavli US/Japan Frontiers program. He has also served as peer reviewer for numerous journals. The long-term goals of Dr. Cooper’s laboratory are to understand information processing in the brain motivation/reward memory circuitry and characterize the adaptations and impaired neural memory mechanisms associated with depression, addiction and schizophrenia.
Research Interest
Psychostimulant drugs alter neuronal impulse activity leading to short and long-term changes in communication within mesolimbic dopamine system,Complementary levels of analysis