USF St. Petersburg graduate student Jaclyn Dell’s upbringing inspired her to pursue research in drug addiction.
“My father passed away from alcoholism and my husband and I have a residential treatment center for drug addiction,” said Dell. “I always knew doing something with drug addiction was my thing, I just didn’t know if I would address it through social work or counseling or something else.”
Dell took her first cognitive and physiological psychology classes at USF St. Petersburg and was hooked, seeing a future in research.
“The faculty and classes here really sparked my research interest, and once I saw what the research was, that was all she wrote,” she said. “You can do this for life and people will pay you? Sign me up.”
Now Dell has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to pursue PhD studies on the psychology of drug addiction in the United Kingdom.
Dell is graduating this spring from USF St. Petersburg with a master’s in Psychology. She will begin her studies at the University of Birmingham in the fall, where she will use brain imaging to identify the neural mechanisms of addiction to substances such as cigarettes and alcohol. She hopes results from her research will guide the development of innovative addiction treatment.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard the news, I was so honored and humbled,” said Dell. “This award is such a huge accomplishment and I felt a bit undeserving, but at the same time I was excited at the opportunity.”
The Fulbright Program is the world’s largest exchange program. It provides research, study and teaching opportunities for students and young professionals worldwide to enhance mutual understanding between people of the U.S. and other countries. For Dell in particular, the Fulbright award will provide a tuition waiver, living expenses and conference grants.
Only around 2,000 grants are given annually by a presidential-appointed board. Those chosen for this honor have gone on to become Nobel Laureates, win Pulitzer Prizes, receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom and become leaders in a variety of fields.
“Being awarded a Fulbright is a very big deal: for Jaclyn, for our psychology department and for the university as a whole,” said Jennifer O’Brien, Assistant Professor of Psychology, whose lab Dell worked in as a graduate student.
Dell’s PhD research will largely focus on incentive salience. Say that an individual has a rewarding behavior they want to quit, such as eating a second piece of cake. Even if the person doesn’t want that second piece, he or she may still be compelled toward it. That is incentive salience.
Incentive salience is a powerful motivator for reward that drives thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Dell hopes to identify both the neural mechanisms that underlie this motivator and how early in the brain process this drive towards a reward stimulus occurs. She will start with smokers and plans to broaden it to other drug-addicted populations.
From what she uncovers, she will use findings to guide addiction treatment strategies in a more proactive, rather than reactive, approach. The overall goal is to answer the question, why can’t people stop doing things they profess to want to quit?
“The motivation is what I am after. And if we can get at that, it can apply to any drug addiction and even things like OCD and eating disorders,” explained Dell.
Dell began her college career at St. Petersburg College, where she received her associate’s degree. She then transferred to USFSP, spending three years as an undergraduate and two more as a graduate.
After an internship at Brown University, where she studied ethanol-reward memory formation in fruit flies, she realized she wanted her research to focus on people. When she returned to USFSP, she discovered that O’Brien was doing EEG research, using electrodes to measure electrical activity of the brain.
“I emailed her right away when I saw this and said, I need to work in your lab,” Dell added. “That was two and a half years ago and I have been working in the lab ever since.”
O’Brien’s Motivate Attention and Perception (MAP) lab conducts research on attention and reward learning. It goes hand in hand with studies on drug addiction, as reward learning impacts the nature of drug addiction.
“Jaclyn has been a remarkable student in my lab, where she has studied the underlying neural mechanisms of how reward learning changes perception and attention. She has designed and conducted studies and presented her research internationally,” said O’Brien. “The University of Birmingham’s psychology PhD program is one of the top in the country and I know she will flourish by working with Drs. Clayton Hickey and Jane Raymond, who are top researchers in our field.”
Dell said none of this would have been possible without the support of the USF System throughout the year-long process of applying and being granted a Fulbright. The USF System played a helping hand with providing prep materials, assistance in writing a statement of purpose and personal statement and kept candidates on track to ensure they submitted all materials on time.